THE  LIFE  OF 

ALFRED  DE  MUSSET 


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LTHE  LIFE  OF 

ALFRED    l)E   MUSSET 


BY 

VEDE    BARINE 


DONE   INTO  ENGLISH 


6    86 

BY 


CHARLES  CONNER   HAYDEN 


ILLUSTRATED 


PRINTED    FOR   SUBSCBIMM  O*LY    BY 

EDWIN   C.    HILL   COMPANY 
1906 


Alfred  de  Musset  as  a  Pag< 


LTHE  LIFE  OF 

ALFRED   DE   MUSSET 

S 

\l  \^  c  <  »  5  ,  L  *  ^  '  /  e 
BY 

ARVEDE    BARINE 


DONE   INTO  ENGLISH 

BY 
CHARLES   CONNER   HAYDEN 


ILLUSTRATED 


PRINTED   FOR  SUBSCRIBERS  ONLY  BY 

EDWIN  C.   HILL  COMPANY 
1906 


COPYRIGHT,  1905,  BY 
EDWIN  C.  HILL  COMPANY 


EDWIN      PRESS 


INTRODUCTION 

I  HEREBY  render  thanks  to  all  those  who  have 
been  kind  enough  to  open  to  me  their  archives 
or  their  collections,  and  thus  enable  me  to  write 
this  little  book.  M.  Alexandre  Dumas  has  taken 
the  trouble  to  furnish  me  with  information  which 
has  been  of  infinite  value.  Madame  Maurice 
Sand,  with  a  confidence  for  which  I  am  pro- 
foundly grateful,  has  sent  me  a  large  number 
of  unpublished  letters,  taken  from  the  archives 
of  Nohant.  M.  le  Vicomte  de  Spoelberch  de 
Lovenjoul,  whose  kindness  and  graciousness  are 
known  to  all  collectors,  allowed  me  to  profit  by 
the  treasures  of  his  collection;  to  him  I  owe  the 
fact  of  my  having  been  able  to  consult  the  manu- 
script of  Sainte-Beuve's  "  Journal "  and  numer- 
ous unpublished  letters.  M.  Maurice  Clouard, 
who  knows  all  that  one  can  know  about  Musset, 
was  most  liberal  in  the  cooperation  of  his  in- 
exhaustible learning  and  precious  library.  M. 
Taigny  has  graciously  placed  at  my  disposal 
autograph  letters  of  Musset,  most  of  them  un- 
published. Others  have  furnished  me  with  in- 
formation of  a  kind  to  be  found  neither  in  books 
nor  in  manuscripts.  I  hereby  acknowledge  to 
all,  my  debt  of  gratitude. 

A.  B. 


LIFE  OF  ALFRED  DE   MUSSET 

CHAPTER  I 

THE    BEGINNING CHILDHOOD 

EVERY  generation  sings  for  itself  and  in  a  lan- 
guage of  its  own.  It  has  poets  of  its  own  to 
interpret  its  feelings  and  aspirations.  After- 
ward come  other  men  with  other  ideas  and  other 
passions,  almost  always  quite  inconsistent  with 
those  of  their  elders,  and  the  newcomers  are  un- 
touched by  all  that  seemed,  only  the  day  before, 
to  be  so  thrilling.  Their  intellectual  preoccupa- 
tions are  no  longer  the  same ;  nor  their  eyes,  their 
ears,  their  souls.  If  peradventure  they  relish  the 
poets  of  the  bygone  generation,  it  is  after  study 
and  reflection,  as  if  it  were  a  question  of  writers 
of  a  distant  time.  This,  too,  is  only  on  the  con- 
dition that  they  find  no  cause  to  dread  their  influ- 
ence. Otherwise  they  take  an  aversion  to  them, 
because  the  younger  men  feel  an  inward  and  per- 
haps wholesome  need  of  thinking  and  feeling 
in  other  ways  than  their  predecessors  felt  and 
thought.  On  these  terms  only  do  they  gain  con- 
sciousness of  themselves. 

Musset  is  beginning  to  be  one  of  these  poets 


6  THE   LIFE   OF 

of  yesterday  whom  only  heads  that  are  turning 
gray  retain  power  to  understand.  No  other  in 
our  century  has  been  so  well  loved.  Not  one  has 
waked  in  men's  hearts  so  many  of  those  pro- 
longed echoes  which  spring  only  from  a  deep  har- 
mony with  him  who  reads,  and  which  never  can 
spring  from  mere  delight  in  art.  He  neverthe- 
less has  yielded  to  the  same  law.  Our  children 
already  need  that  we  explain  to  them  why  we  can- 
not hear  one  line  of  his,  were  it  the  most  unmean- 
ing, without  experiencing  an  emotion  of  joy  or 
of  gloom,  why  each  one  of  our  happinesses,  each 
one  of  our  sufferings  revives  the  memory  of  some 
page,  a  line,  a  word  to  console  or  make  us  merry. 
To  tell  them  these  things  is  to  betray  the  secret 
of  our  dreams  and  passions,  to  confess  how 
romanesque  and  sentimental  we  were,  and  to 
cover  us  with  ridicule  in  the  eyes  of  our  children 
who  are  so  little  ours.  Still  such  will  be  the  aim 
of  this  little  book,  and  the  coming  historians  of 
Musset  will  be  constrained  to  do  the  same,  though 
it  may  cost  them  dear.  The  soul  of  the  poet  of 
The  Nights  is  bound  by  so  many  threads,  and  so 
strong  threads,  to  the  souls  of  those  who  were 
twenty  between  1850  and  1870,  that  to  essay  to 
sever  them  would  be  in  vain.  Whether  we 
make  it  a  reproach  against  Musset  or,  on  the  con- 
trary, see  in  it  his  foremost  title  to  glory,  matters 
not ;  to  speak  of  him  is  to  speak  of  the  multitudes 
whom  he  subdued  to  their  weal  or  to  their  woe. 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  7 

A  happier  cradle  for  a  child  of  genius  than  that 
of  Alfred  de  Musset  we  could  hardly  imagine. 
He  was  born  in  Paris  on  the  llth  day  of  Decem- 
ber, 1810,  of  a  good  old  family,  in  which  the  love 
of  literature  was  traditional  and  whose  every 
member  from  father  to  son  had  talent.  To  trace 
them  back  to  Colin  de  Musset,  the  minstrel  of 
the  thirteenth  century,  whose  name  was  per- 
haps merely  Colin  Muset,  is  unnecessary;  but 
the  poet's  granduncle,  the  Marquis  de  Musset, 
gained  a  brilliant  success  in  1778  with  a  novel  in 
letters  "prompted,"  according  to  the  preface, 
"  by  the  love  of  virtue,"  and  bearing  a  title  to 
match  the  preface:  Correspondance  djun  jeune 
militaire,  or  Memoirs  de  Luzigny  et  d'Hortense 
de  Saint-Just.  The  ancient  Marquis  lived  down 
to  1839,  representing,  in  his  grandnephews' 
eyes,  the  old  regime,  not  excepting  feudal  ages. 
His  chateau  had  medieval  parts  with  deep  em- 
brazures,  double  floors  to  hide  trap-doors  and 
lurking  places.  He  himself  had  the  strutting 
gait,  the  bristling  points  of  the  man  who  had 
worn  the  short  culotte.  Deep  as  was  his  con- 
tempt for  newspapers,  never  would  he  fail  to 
uncover  when  he  came  across  the  name  of  one  of 
the  royal  family  in  the  gazette,  and  yet  he  had 
not  wholly  escaped  the  influence  of  Rousseau. 
It  was  not  uncommon  for  him  to  write  phrases 
a  la  Jean  Jacques :  "  One  is  happy  only  in  the 
country,  one  is  comfortable  only  under  the  shade 


8  THE    LIFE    OF 

of  his  own  fig-tree."  With  all  his  devout  piety 
he  had,  when  getting  old,  composed  a  satire 
against  the  Jesuits,  which  he  signed  Thomas 
Simplicien.  The  younger  folks  of  the  family 
were  in  the  land  of  Cocagne  when  with  him, 
but  he  could  not  comprehend  romanticism. 

The  father  of  Alfred,  M.  de  Musset-Pathay, 
much  younger  than  the  Marquis,  harbored  no 
grudges  against  the  Revolution,  for  it  had 
done  him  the  service  of  taking  away  from  him 
that  little  clerical  collet  and  of  giving  him  his 
emperor.  In  his  existence  he  had  intermingled 
literature  with  war  and  official  labors,  and  in  his 
writings  the  same  diversity  is  manifest,  a  little 
of  everything — novels,  history,  travels,  books  of 
erudition.  The  biography  of  Rousseau,  in  which 
he  takes  up  his  defense  against  the  Grimm  clique, 
is  a  patient  and  solid  work,  and,  besides,  he  pos- 
sessed a  taste  and  skill  in  humorous  verse.  He 
was  jovial  and  witty  and  quick  at  a  retort,  as  well 
as  caustic  when  the  occasion  demanded,  but  at 
bottom  the  best  and  kindest  of  men.  As  a  father 
he  was  amiable,  too  indulgent,  and  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  in  his  way  of  thinking.  This  is  a 
point  to  bear  in  mind.  No  more  than  the  Marquis 
did  M.  de  Musset-Pathay  understand  one  word 
of  romanticism.  He  had  a  sister  who  was  a  ca- 
noness  and  once  a  pupil  at  Saint-Cyr,  a  woman 
steeped  in  pious  devotion.  She  had  a  little 
musty  house  in  a  faubourg  at  Vendome,  and  here 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  9 

she  had  quietly  grown  soured  between  snarling 
dogs  and  devout  practises.  Certain  lines,  writ- 
ten by  one  of  her  nephews,  lead  one  to  think  that 
she,  too,  was  not  without  the  gift  of  repartee  and 
that  she  was  a  match  for  her  brother.  While  she 
made  light  of  literature,  she  fixed  a  distinction 
between  prose  and  verse :  prose  was  mean  drudg- 
ery, to  be  left  to  clodhoppers;  verse  was  the 
worst  of  things  shameful,  one  of  those  humilia- 
tions from  which  families  never  recover. 

The  maternal  line  of  Musset  was  not  less 
savory.  His  grandfather,  Guyot-Desherbiers, 
once  a  lawyer,  had  associated  with  the  ideologues ', 
and  his  imagination  was  that  of  a  poet,  his  wit 
merry  and  flashing.  From  all  this  had  sprung 
an  eighteenth-century  Fantasio,  more  sparkling 
than  the  one  that  we  know  and  nowise  inferior 
to  him  in  picturesque  language,  but  without  that 
note  of  tender  melancholy  which  distinguishes 
the  hero  of  Musset.  M.  Guyot-Desherbiers 
hardly  dreamed  of  showing  compassion  for  the 
troubles  of  fairy  princesses;  but  to  offset  that, 
during  the  convulsions  succeeding  the  9th  of 
Thermidor,  he  had,  and  not  without  great  risk, 
saved  more  than  one  head.  His  grandchildren 
were  fortunate  enough  to  enjoy  his  inexhaustible 
vein  of  inspiration:  a  grandsire  Fantasio  was 
ever  Fantasio.  He  died  in  1828,  weighed  down 
with  years.  A  poet  at  leisure,  his  great  work 
was  a  poem  on  Cats.  He  made  the  cat  a  friend 


10  THE   LIFE    OF 

of  mankind,  a  lover  of  the  poor  and  their  scant 

fare. 

For  them,  for  them  his  back  is  swelling, 
Within  his  breast  for  them  is  welling 
The  paternoster  of  delight. 

Technical  difficulties  were  sport  to  him;  he 
would  write  in  triple  rime — unaided  by  padding 
expletives — one  whole  canto  of  his  poem,  or  he 
would  invent  more  complicated  rhythms.  He 
had  guessed  the  talent  of  Theodore  de  Banville 
sooner  than  Victor  Hugo.  His  grandson  missed 
his  influence  when  he  had  to  face  his  own  people, 
with  their  classic  bringing  up,  in  defense  of  the 
overslidings  and  unforeseen  epithets  in  the  Tales 
of  Spain  and  Italy.  There  are  so  many  things 
that  our  Fantasios  comprehend! 

Grandmother  Guyot-Desherbiers  was  a  re- 
markable sample  of  the  French  bourgeois  of  the 
preceding  century.  With  an  infinite  fund  of 
good  sense,  she  was  not  hindered  from  being  a 
spiritual  daughter  of  Jean  Jacques,  as  passion- 
ate as  Julie  and  Saint-Preux,  and  eloquent  like 
them  in  her  hours  of  emotion.  Not  the  eloquence 
which  makes  people  say  of  a  woman  that  she 
talks  like  a  book,  but  the  eloquence  and  pathos 
which  move  the  heart.  At  such  a  time  she  made 
a  profound  impression  upon  all  the  family,  for 
they  usually  saw  her  undisturbed  and  very  seri- 
ous. The  eldest  daughter,  Madame  de  Musset- 
Pathay,  had  much  of  her  nature. 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  11 

The  intellectual  ancestry  of  De  Musset,  we  see, 
can  readily  be  unraveled  by  any  one  interested 
in  the  mysteries  of  heredity.  Among  his  ances- 
tors we  have  found  several  intellectual  men,  filled 
with  a  joyous  animation,  and  poets  more  or  less, 
and  two  women  of  bright  sensibility  and  warm 
and  natural  eloquence.  It  is  to  these  latter  that 
one  may  trace  The  Nights  and  all  the  fiery  and 
passionate  parts  of  his  work.  As  for  his  aunt, 
the  canoness,  she  filled  the  role  of  the  fairy  Cara- 
bosse,  who  could  not  be  absent  from  the  christen- 
ing of  a  Prince  Charming.  When  De  Musset 
accuses  himself  in  his  letters  of  being  a  grumbler 
and  writes,  "  I  have  grumbled  my  fill,"  or,  "  Now 
I  am  ready  to  be  vexed  at  myself  for  all  my 
grumbling,"  it  is  the  canoness  at  her  pranks, 
avenging  herself  for  having  a  poet-nephew,  with 
a  breath,  a  very  little  one,  of  her  own  cross 
temper. 

The  child  in  whom  the  race  was  to  unfold  in 
full  flower  was  a  handsome,  affectionate,  fair- 
haired  boy.  A  portrait  of  him  at  the  age  of 
three,  in  the  troubadour  style  fashionable  in  the 
days  of  Queen  Hortense,  presents  the  youngster 
en  chemise  sitting  in  poetic  open-air  surround- 
ings, with  his  little  feet  in  a  stream  of  water. 
Long  curls  give  him  the  look  of  a  very  nice  little 
girl.  Near  him  is  a  big  sword  which  he  had  de- 
manded "  for  defense  against  the  frogs."  In 
another  canvas  he  is  a  few  years  older,  but  still 


12  THE    LIFE    OF 

keeping  his  pretty  blond  curls.  He  has  also  the 
same  placid,  ingenuous  expression,  and  yet  this 
did  not  come  out  of  any  failure  to  take  life's 
troubles  in  a  tragic  way,  or  to  enjoy  its  delights 
with  ardor.  He  was  already  in  the  highest  de- 
gree impressionable,  excitable,  and  eloquent  even, 
if  we  are  to  believe  his  brother  Paul,  who  tells 
us  that,  when  hardly  out  of  his  swaddling-clothes, 
the  embryo  poet  had  "  oratorical  impulses  and 
picturesque  expressions  in  depicting  childish 
woes  and  pleasures."  Already  he  had  an  "  im- 
patience to  enjoy  "  and  the  "  disposition  to  squan- 
der time  "  which  never  left  him  afterward.  One 
day  when  some  red  shoes  were  brought  and  his 
mother  could  not  dress  him  quickly  enough  to 
suit  him,  he  stamped  his  foot  and  cried,  "  Hurry, 
mama,  or  my  new  shoes  will  be  old."  In  fact, 
he  was  beginning  to  suffer  from  palpitations  and 
choking. 

To  deal  with  these  quivering  organisms,  intel- 
ligent and  light  hands  are  requisite,  and  M.  de 
Musset-Pathay  was  only  too  indulgent.  He, 
too,  might  have  said : 

Whatever  he  has  done,  quick  pardon  first  I  crave, 
Whatever  he  may  wish,  I  ask  that  he  may  have — 
On  spoiling  children,  this  is  all  my  mind. 

But  M.  de  Musset-Pathay  hardly  had  any 
time  to  be  busy  with  small  children.  He  left  his 
wife  to  rear  Paul  and  Alfred,  who  lost  nothing 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  13 

thereby.  They  owed  to  her  one  of  those  whole- 
some and  happy  childhoods  of  which  nothing 
need  be  said,  in  which  the  memorable  events,  for- 
ever stamped  on  the  memory,  were  a  game,  or  a 
sentence  to  the  dark  closet. 

Musset  began  his  studies  with  a  teacher  who 
used  to  climb  up  the  trees  with  his  pupils.  The 
lessons  were  none  the  worse  for  this,  though 
there  was  a  difficult  moment  when  the  scholar 
came  across  the  Thousand  and  One  Nights  and 
la  Bibliotheque  bleue.  His  little  head  began  to 
turn,  and  for  months,  in  class  and  out  of  it,  he 
thought  only  of  enchanters  and  paladins.  He 
hunted  through  his  father's  house,  in  rue  Cas- 
sette, for  secret  passages  which  make  us  hear 
steps  sounding  within  the  wall,  and  for  con- 
cealed doors  for  traitors  and  deliverers  to  spring 
through.  Some  one  gave  him  Don  Quixote, 
which  quieted  him  without  correcting  him  of  the 
idea  that  life  is  like  the  enchanted  forest  in  which 
the  four  brethren  Aymon  had  miraculous  adven- 
tures. He  was  born  with  the  faith  in  luck,  and 
was  ever  one  of  those  who  believe  in  fate's 
surprises,  only  deeming  themselves  baffled  and 
duped  when  that  which  happens  is  merely  what 
ought  to  happen. 

Men  of  such  a  disposition  submit  to  life 
instead  of  being  its  maker,  and  the  case  with 
Musset  was  of  this  kind. 

He  was  seven  when  he  devoured  the  Thousand 


14  THE   LIFE    OF 

and  One  Nights,  and  that  same  year  he  and  the 
whole  household  made  a  long  stay  in  the  country 
in  an  old  rambling  house,  a  source  of  great 
amusement  for  the  children,  which  was  hard  by 
the  farm  of  goodman  Piedeleu,  which  he  has  de- 
scribed in  Mar  got:  "  Madame  Piedeleu,  his  wife, 
had  given  him  nine  children,  eight  of  them  boys, 
and  if  each  of  the  eight  was  not  six  feet  tall, 
they  were  pretty  near  it.  This  was  certainly  the 
stature  of  the  goodman,  and  the  mother  could 
boast  her  five  feet  five;  the  handsomest  woman, 
too,  in  the  country  round.  The  eight  boys,  strong 
as  steers,  the  terror  and  the  admiration  of  the 
hamlet,  obeyed  their  sire  like  so  many  slaves." 
The  little  folks  from  Paris  were  never  weary  of 
watching  the  tribe  of  giants  and  of  tumbling  in 
the  hayricks.  Yet  it  was  after  a  summer  spent 
in  this  wholesome  fashion  that  the  junior,  as  soon 
as  he  came  home,  had  "  a  fit  of  mania,"  as  the 
brother  terms  it.  "  In  one  day,"  says  Paul,  "  he 
smashed  a  mirror  in  the  parlor  with  an  ivory  ball, 
cut  the  new  curtains  with  scissors,  and  pasted  a 
broad,  red  wafer  upon  the  map  of  Europe  in  the 
very  middle  of  the  Mediterranean.  These  three 
disasters  drew  upon  him  not  the  smallest  repri- 
mand, because  he  seemed  to  be  in  consternation." 
This  anecdote,  which  at  first  sight  seems  puerile, 
casts  a  flash  of  light  upon  the  inequality  of  Al- 
fred's character.  No  one  could  show  better  sense, 
a  clearer  head,  when  the  nerves  were  not  con- 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  15 

cerned,  but  they  often  were.  They  were  irritable, 
exciting  "  fits  of  mania,"  in  the  course  of  which 
he  would  do  mischief  against  his  own  will.  Next 
he  bewailed  it  all,  overwhelming  himself  with 
reproaches,  but  continued  none  the  less  at  the 
mercy  of  his  nerves. 

From  his  brother,  also,  we  learn  that  he  drew 
his  own  portrait  as  Valentine  at  the  beginning 
of  The  Two  Mistresses.  The  page  that  we  are 
about  to  read  is  therefore  a  personal  reminis- 
cence, showing  us  a  too  impressionable  child. 
"  To  make  you  better  acquainted,  we  must  tell 
you  a  trait  of  his  childhood.  Valentine,  when  ten 
or  twelve,  slept  in  a  little  room  with  a  glass  door, 
behind  his  mother's  bedchamber.  The  room  had 
a  somewhat  paltry  look,  and  was  encumbered 
with  dusty  wardrobes.  With  other  lumber,  it 
contained  an  old  portrait  in  a  broad  gilt  frame. 
When,  on  any  fine  morning,  the  sun  was  beating 
upon  the  portrait,  the  child  would  kneel  on  the 
bed  and  creep  close  to  it,  and  when  they  thought 
him  to  be  asleep,  until  it  was  time  for  the  teacher 
to  come,  he  would  lie  there  for  hours,  with  his 
brow  resting  on  one  corner  of  the  frame,  and  the 
sunbeams  striking  the  gildings  surrounded  him 
with  a  halo,  as  it  were,  in  which  his  swimming 
eyes  were  dazzled.  In  this  attitude  he  would 
have  a  thousand  dreams,  while  queer  ecstasies 
laid  hold  of  him.  The  more  brilliantly  the 
light  shone  the  more  his  heart  would  expand. 


16  THE    LIFE    OF 

Here  it  was,  as  he  told  me  himself,  that  he  con- 
ceived a  passionate  longing  for  sunlight  and 
gold." 

Again,  at  the  age  of  thirteen,  during  a  hunt 
in  which  he  barely  missed  wounding  his  brother, 
he  had  nervous  spasms  of  sufficient  violence  to 
induce  fever.  Noting  this,  we  have  the  key  to 
many  incidents  of  his  troubled  existence. 

His  college  years  were  as  destitute  of  event  as 
were  those  of  his  earlier  childhood.  From  the 
sixth  form  onward  he  was  a  day-pupil  at  the 
college  of  Henri  IV.,  and  made  good  progress. 
Now  and  then  he  got  his  share  of  fisticuffs.  We 
may  believe  that  he  gave  some  in  return.  In  The 
Two  Mistresses  he  has  told  us  the  rest:  "His 
first  steps  in  life  were  guided  by  the  instinct  of 
inborn  passion.  In  college  he  sought  intimates 
solely  among  boys  wealthier  than  himself — not 
out  of  pride,  but  from  taste.  He  was  precocious 
in  his  studies,  and  was  less  incited  by  self-love 
than  by  a  kind  of  need  of  distinction.  He  would 
sometimes  begin  to  shed  tears  in  the  very  midst 
of  the  class  when  on  a  Saturday  he  had  missed 
his  place  on  the  honor-bench."  During  holidays 
his  father  would  take  him  out  for  family  visits, 
and  he  was  present  at  a  skirmish  with  the  canon- 
ess,  or  even  enjoyed  the  unparalleled  honor  of 
sleeping  in  his  uncle's  secret  chamber.  This  is 
all  that  happened  to  him  between  the  ages  of  nine 
and  sixteen. 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  17 

In  1827  he  took  the  second  prize  in  philosophy 
in  the  grand  competition.  Musset,  in  his  essay, 
treated  the  pyrrhonists  as  sophists,  as  was  re- 
quired by  etiquette,  but  he  added  that  it  mattered 
but  little  whether  they  were  right,  "provided 
that  what  is  do  not  change  and  be  not  taken 
from  us,"  dummodo  quae  sunt  nee  mutentur^  nee 
eripiantur — all  of  which  looks  pyrrhonist  enough 
essentially.  After  the  award  his  mother  de- 
scribed the  ceremony  to  a  friend.  There  were 
flourishes  of  trumpets,  princes,  the  four  facul- 
ties in  their  robes,  and  her  son  was  so  beautiful! 
She  had  a  good  cry,  and  everything  was  lovely. 
"  For  three  days,"  she  continues,  "  we  have  seen 
nothing  but  crowns,  and  books  with  gilt  edges; 
we  needed  carriages  to  carry  them  away."  Mus- 
set, after  this  apotheosis,  left  the  benches  of  the 
classroom.  He  was  bachelor  of  arts,  and  he  was 
all  energy  in  his  refusal  to  fit  for  the  Polytechnic. 
A  long  letter  to  his  friend,  Paul  Foucher,  writ- 
ten, on  the  23d  of  September  following,  from 
the  chateau  of  the  Marquis,  gives  us  a  first 
glimpse  of  the  forces  at  work  within  him.  We 
must  bear  in  mind,  as  we  read  these  fragments, 
that  he  was  then  at  the  awkward  age,  when  the 
ideas  are  as  loose- jointed  as  the  body.  He  was 
the  first  to  say,  at  a  later  day,  that  he  had  been 
"  as  shallow  as  the  next  man." 

He  had  but  recently  heard  of  the  sudden  death 
of  Madame  Guyot-Desherbiers.  His  holidays 


18  THE   LIFE   OF 

were  broken  up  and  rendered  gloomy.  "  My 
brother  has  started  back  to  town.  I  am  alone 
in  the  chateau;  there  is  no  one  to  speak  to  but 
my  uncle,  who,  it  is  true,  shows  me  a  thousand 
kindnesses;  but  the  ideas  of  a  white-haired  head 
are  not  those  of  a  head  covered  with  blond  locks. 
He  is  a  man  of  extreme  erudition.  Whenever 
I  speak  of  dramas  which  please  me  or  verses 
which  are  striking,  he  replies : '  You  would  rather 
read  that  in  some  good  historian,  would  you  not? 
It  is  always  truer  and  more  exact.  You  have 
read  Hamlet,  and  you  know  the  effect  produced 
on  him  by  the  learned  and  erudite  Polonius.' 
And  that  man  is  good  withal,  virtuous,  loved  by 
every  one.  He  is  not  one  of  those  to  whom  the 
brook  is  only  flowing,  the  forest  nothing  but  tim- 
ber of  this  or  that  species  and  so  many  hundred 
fagots,  Heaven  bless  them!  Perhaps  they  are 
happier  than  you  and  I." 

We  feel  that  Musset  is  a  prey  to  the  distress 
which  often  seizes  upon  young  men  as  they  per- 
ceive, at  the  moment  when  they  begin  to  think 
for  themselves,  that  they  have  become  strangers 
to  the  round  of  ideas  in  which  they  have  been 
reared.  The  discovery  disconcerts  them  as  a  lack 
of  filial  respect,  albeit  that  it  may  flatter  their 
pride.  In  1827  romanticism  was  fermenting  in 
the  veins  of  youth.  Young  men  knew  the  Medi- 
tations and  the  Odes  et  Ballades  by  heart.  Shake- 
speare and  Byron,  Goethe  and  Schiller  were  their 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  19 

passion.  The  preface  to  Cromwell  was  soon  to 
appear,  the  adversaries  of  the  new  school  of 
poetry  were  preparing  for  resistance,  and  the  two 
camps  were  seen  to  be  forming  which  were  to 
come  to  blows  at  the  first  representation  of  Her- 
nani.  Musset  was  young  among  the  young,  and 
we  can  conceive  his  indignation  when  the  Mar- 
quis, reasonably  no  doubt,  called  it  to  his  atten- 
tion that  Plutarch  deserves  more  confidence  than 
Shakespeare,  and  that  it  is  not  by  any  means 
sure  that  Moses  had  all  the  ideas  which  De  Vigny 
ascribed  to  him. 

In  his  letter  he  passed  at  once  to  himself  and 
his  future:  "  I  feel  dull  and  gloomy,  and  do  not 
believe  you  to  be  more  cheerful  than  I,  but  I  have 
not  even  the  courage  to  work.  Eh!  What  could 
I  do?  Take  up  some  old  thesis  again  or  be  orig- 
inal in  spite  of  myself  and  my  verse?  Since  I 
have  been  reading  newspapers,  my  sole  pastime 
here,  somehow  all  that  seems  to  have  a  wretched 
finish !  I  do  not  know  whether  it  is  the  quibbling 
of  commentators,  the  mania  of  adapters  that  dis- 
gusts me,  but  I  would  rather  not  write  or  I  could 
wish  to  be  Shakespeare  or  Schiller.  So  I  do 
nothing,  feeling  that  the  worst  that  can  befall 
any  man  with  lively  passions  is  to  be  without 
them.  I  am  not  in  love,  I  am  doing  nothing, 
nothing  keeps  me  here.  ...  I  would  give 
twenty-five  francs  to  have  one  of  Shakespeare's 
pieces  here  in  English.  The  papers  are  so  in- 


20  THE    LIFE    OF 

sipid — critics  so  flat !  Make  systems,  my  friends, 
establish  rules ;  you  are  working  only  on  the  cold 
monuments  of  the  past.  A  man  of  genius  will 
come,  and  he  will  upset  your  scaffoldings,  laugh 
at  your  poetics.  I  feel  at  moments  a  wish  to  take 
the  pen  and  defile  one  or  two  sheets  of  paper, 
but  the  initial  difficulty  deters,  and  a  sovereign 
disgust  makes  me  stretch  my  arms  and  shut  my 
eyes.  How  is  it  that  I  am  left  here  for  so  long? 
I  need  to  look  at  woman;  I  need  a  pretty  foot 
and  a  shapely  waist;  I  need  to  love.  I  would 
fall  in  love  with  my  cousin,  who  is  old  and  ugly, 
if  she  were  not  thrifty  and  a  pedant."  There 
ensue  two  big  pages  of  complaints  about  his 
ennui  and  the  law  studies  for  which  he  is  destined 
by  the  family:  "No,  my  friend,"  he  concludes, 
"  I  cannot  believe  it;  I  have  that  pride;  neither 
you  nor  I  am  destined  to  be  merely  estimable 
lawyers  or  intelligent  attorneys.  In  the  depths 
of  my  soul  an  instinct  calls  out  the  contrary.  I 
still  believe  in  happiness,  though  very  unhappy 
nowadays." 

In  these  schoolboy  effusions,  it  will  be  noticed, 
he  is  racked  with  the  need  of  writing.  White 
paper  attracts  and  dismays  him — the  two  go  well 
together.  This  is  the  bursting  forth  into  bud  of 
his  vocation,  and  we  detect  it  at  the  very  begin- 
ning, as  Musset  was  not  one  of  those  infant 
prodigies,  after  the  fashions  of  Goethe  or  Hugo, 
who  used  to  cry  for  their  nurse  in  rime.  At 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  21 

seventeen  his  poetical  baggage  was  utterly  in- 
significant. 

As  for  the  distressing  ennui  always  gnawing 
him,  his  discouragement  in  the  face  of  the  fu- 
ture at  the  moment  when  all  is  opening  before 
him,  there  is  nothing  within  him  that  is  peculiarly 
his.  It  is  a  mental  state,  noticed  again  and  again 
by  a  great  variety  of  authors  in  the  generation 
which  was  coming  to  manhood  during  the  Res- 
toration, and  by  Stendhal,  and  Musset  himself, 
wrongly  or  rightly  attributed  to  the  concussion 
caused  by  the  downfall  of  the  empire.  Their 
argument  is  well  known.  The  void  left  by  a  Na- 
poleon cannot  be  filled.  On  the  morrow  after 
the  violent  efforts  which  he  exacted  from  the 
French,  the  young  men  of  the  Restoration  found 
themselves  idlers.  Comparing  what  was  going 
on  around  them  to  the  imperial  gallop  through 
the  capitals  of  Europe,  they  held  the  present  to 
be  colorless  and  mean;  they  knew  not  what  to 
do  with  themselves.  To  these  young  men  Musset 
has  devoted  one  chapter  of  the  Confession:  "  A 
feeling  of  indescribable  discomfort  began  to 
work  in  all  young  hearts.  Condemned  to  quiet 
by  the  rulers  of  the  world,  delivered  over  to 
vulgar  pedants  of  every  species,  to  sloth  and 
to  ennui,  the  younger  men  felt  in  the  depth 
of  their  souls  the  presence  of  an  intolerable 
wretchedness." 

The  source  of  this  moral  wretchedness  may  be 


22  THE   LIFE   OF 

a  subject  for  discussion;  we  cannot  deny  the  ex- 
istence of  it.  It  was  a  stubborn  disease.  Max- 
ime  Du  Camp,  who  was  a  dozen  years  younger 
than  Musset,  writes  in  his  Literary  Souvenirs: 
"  The  generation  of  artists  and  writers  which 
came  before  me,  the  one  to  which  I  belonged, 
had  a  youth  of  deplorable  sadness — a  sadness 
without  cause  as  well  as  without  object;  purely 
abstract,  but  inherent  in  the  being  and  in  the 
epoch."  Young  men  were  haunted  by  the  idea 
of  suicide.  "  It  was  no  fashion  merely,  as  might 
be  thought;  it  was  a  general  breaking  down 
which  rendered  the  heart  sad,  the  thoughts  som- 
ber, and  made  men  see  dimly  a  deliverance  in 
death." 

The  "  very  unhappy  "  student  of  the  letter  to 
Paul  Foucher  was  then  to  enter  the  world  with 
a  soul  poisoned  with  germs  of  disgust.  Another 
disease  which  he  shared  with  many  of  his  con- 
temporaries prevented  the  wound  from  healing: 
"  I  had,"  so  he  wrote  long  afterward,  "  or  sup- 
posed I  had,  that  nasty  malady,  doubt,  which 
essentially  is  a  childish  thing,  whenever  it  is  not 
a  prejudice  and  an  affectation."  (To  the  Duch- 
esse  de  Castries,  1840.)  The  question  here  is 
not  merely  one  of  religious  lukewarmness,  but 
of  that  moral  anemia  which  impels  us  to  lose 
faith  in  everything.  Musset  ascribed  this  plague 
to  the  influence  of  English  and  German  ideas, 
represented  by  Byron  and  Goethe.  Whatever 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  23 

the  truth,  the  trouble  was  there,  contributing  to 
the  general  breaking  down  mentioned  by  Du 
Camp.  Musset  had  been  stricken  at  the  age 
when  it  is  most  important  to  believe  in  some- 
thing, no  matter  what. 


CHAPTER   II 

MUSSET   AND   THE   CENACLE 

THE  two  years  after  his  leaving  college  were 
decisive  for  his  development.  He  seemed  to  be 
doing  nothing.  "  He  pretended  to  be  studying 
law,"  he  says  of  himself  in  The  Two  Mistresses, 
"  andl  really  spent  his  time  strolling  about  the 
boulevard  or  the  Tuileries."  Soon  he  quitted  law 
for  medicine,  but  the  dissecting-room  gave  him 
the  horrors;  he  fled,  could  not  eat,  dreamed  of 
corpses,  and  solemnly  renounced  the  adoption  of 
a  profession.  "  Man,"  he  declared  to  his  family, 
"  is  now  too  little  a  thing  upon  this  particle  of 
sand  on  which  we  live.  Most  decidedly  I  shall 
not  consent  to  become  a  particular  variety  of 
man." 

Despite  appearances  he  was  far  from  losing 
his  time.  Paul  Foucher  had  taken  him,  when  a 
mere  boy,  to  Victor  Hugo,  and  after  leaving 
school  he  was  assiduous  in  keeping  up  the  ac- 
quaintance, becoming  the  Benjamin  in  the  Cena- 
cle.  Alfred  de  Vigny,  Sainte-Beuve,  Merimee, 
Charles  Nodier,  the  two  Deschamps  brothers,  ac- 
customed themselves,  in  imitation  of  Hugo,  their 
chief  and  master,  to  keeping  the  boy  about  them, 

24 


ALFRED  DE  MUSSET  25 

admitting  him  to  library  discussions  in  which 
they  laid  down  the  principle  that  romanticism 
sprang  from  the  "  need  of  truth  " — exactly  what, 
half  a  century  later,  was  said  of  naturalism, 
"  that  the  poet  should  have  but  one  model,  na- 
ture ;  one  guide,  truth  " ;  that,  as  a  consequence, 
he  requires  to  mix  the  ugly  with  the  beautiful  in 
his  works,  "  the  grotesque  with  the  sublime," 
since  nature  has  given  him  the  example,  and 
"  all  in  nature  is  not  art." 

In  his  presence  they  settled  what  their  new 
poetic  was  to  be :  "  We  should  like  a  verse  at 
once  free,  genuine,  straightforward,  understand- 
ing how  to  break  at  the  right  moment  and,  by 
displacing  the  cesura,  to  disguise  the  monotone 
of  the  Alexandrine;  fond  of  the  enjambement 
extending  it  rather  than  of  the  inversion  that 
makes  it  intricate;  faithful  to  rime,  that  slave- 
queen,  that  supreme  grace  of  our  poetry,  that 
parent  of  our  meter,  inexhaustible  in  the  variety 
of  its  devices,  with  inconceivable  secrets  of  ele- 
gance and  execution." 

They  took  him  out  for  esthetic  walks,  in  which 
the  Cenacle,  headed  by  Victor  Hugo,  practised 
at  romantic  sensations;  and  we  must  own  that 
Musset  did  not  always  bring  to  them  an  edifying 
mental  attitude.  His  companions  took  their  part 
as  neophytes  seriously.  Whether  climbing  up 
the  towers  of  Notre  Dame  to  contemplate  in  im- 
agination the  Paris  of  the  begging  vagrants  or 


26  THE    LIFE    OF 

walking  the  plain  of  Montrouge  to  see  the  sun 
go  down,  nobody  ever  forgot  to  be  romantic. 
Musset  irreverently  laughed  at  the  satin  waist- 
coats of  his  mates,  their  beards  fluttering  in  the 
wind,  their  attitudes  of  respect  before  an  ogiveal 
arch,  and  their  grandiloquent  apostrophes  to  the 
landscape. 

He  was  also  at  the  evenings  with  Nodier  in 
the  library,  when  each  man  would  recite  his 
works,  prose  or  verse.  In  a  word,  he  had  the 
signal  good  fortune  to  be  adopted,  spoiled,  lec- 
tured, indoctrinated  by  one  of  the  most  glorious 
intellectual  elites  ever  possessed  by  any  country, 
and  he  was  straightway  to  prove  that  the  good 
seed  had  not  fallen  into  stony  places  or  among 
the  thorns.  In  him  poetry  awoke  so  quickly  that 
it  was  swifter  than  the  spring;  it  was  an  aurora 
which  grew  and  grew  before  the  sight,  and  whose 
earliest  gleams  flung  him  into  unf orgotten  rav- 
ishment. 

It  was  in  the  course  of  solitary  walks  in  the 
Bois  de  Boulogne,  less  frequented  then  than  now, 
that  he  overheard  within  him  the  song  of  his  ear- 
liest rimes.  In  1828,  in  the  spring,  his  relatives 
had  established  themselves  at  Auteuil.  He  would 
go  out  into  the  woods  to  read,  and  there  he  re- 
ceived the  yet  stealthy  visits  recalled  in  the  Nuit 
d'Aout. 

From  these  walks  ne  brought  home  pieces  of 
verse  which  he  did  not  admit  into  his  collections, 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  27 

and  with  good  reason,  because  imitation  was  too 
much  felt  in  them,  but  which  are  precious  to  the 
biographer  on  account  of  their  extreme  diversity. 
They  are  the  verses  of  a  beginner  seeking  his 
path,  and  not  irresistibly  drawn  to  one  or  the 
other  side.  A  reading  of  Andre  Chenier  inspired 
an  elegy: 

Both  white  and  sweet  she  comes,  the  Athenian  maid, 
To  seek  the  rill  from  springs  beneath  the  fig-tree's  shade. 

A  meeting  of  the  Cenacle  brought  out  a  ballad, 
and  next  Musset  wrote  a  drama  in  honor  of 
Hugo.  We  read  in  this: 

One  man  in  a  helmet's  worth  two  with  hats. 

Four  doctors  with  cap,  a  dozen  in  wigs 

And  twenty-four  tonsured  above  the  nape  of  their  necks. 

Another  ballad,  called  the  Dream,  and  by  its 
rhythm  foreshadowing  the  Ballad  to  the  Moon, 
was  printed,  thanks  to  Paul  Foucher,  in  a  coun- 
try paper: 

The  rope  so  bare  and  lean 
Would  shiver  'neath  the  cold, 

Cold  bell-tower, 

And  shirk  with  bitter  tone  and  keen, 
Will  ye  miss  in  your  convent-hold 
The  Advent  hour? 

Monks  round  the  candle-flame 
With  brows  against  the  pavement  stone 
Washed  all  clear, 


28  THE    LIFE    OF 

Blushing  at  the  Virgin's  name, 
Would  hide  each  sin  full-blown 
Far  from  her  ear. 

Is  this  a  parody  of  the  poetry  of  the  romantics 
already,  like  the  Ballad  to  the  Moon?  There 
would  be  nothing  wonderful  in  that,  for  Musset, 
in  the  Cenacle,  was  zealous  as  a  pupil,  but  not 
docile.  They  were  kind  and  listened  to  the 
youngster,  and  he  profited  by  that,  and  on  certain 
questions  flew  in  the  face  of  the  master  himself. 
He  never  considered  the  rich  rime  was  obligatory. 
On  the  appearance  of  his  first  poetry  he  wrote 
to  his  mother's  brother,  Desherbiers,  sending  him 
the  volume:  "You  will  see  feeble  rimes;  I  had 
an  aim  in  making  them,  and  know  what  to  think 
of  them ;  but  it  was  important  to  distinguish  one- 
self from  this  school  of  rimesters  who  have  un- 
dertaken to  reconstruct,  but  have  concerned 
themselves  only  with  form,  supposing  them- 
selves to  be  rebuilding  when  they  were  replaster- 
ing."  (January,  1830.)  A  witness  of  his  first 
groping  attempts,  Sainte-Beuve  declares  that  he 
unrimed  afterward,  intentionally,  the  Andalouse, 
and  that  it  was  "  better  rimed  in  the  early  sketch." 

He  also  considered  himself  emancipated — his 
presumption  will  be  pardoned  in  view  of  his 
youth — from  all  the  forced  and  declamatory  in 
the  ancestors  of  romanticism.  Six  years  later  he 
reminded  George  Sand  how  he  had  laughed  of 


ALFRED   DE    MUSSET  29 

old  at  the  Nouvelle  Heloise  and  Werther.  He 
had  no  right  to  laugh  so  much,  for  he  had  worse 
on  his  conscience.  In  1828  he  translated  for 
a  bookseller  De  Quincey's  Confessions  of  an 
Opium  Eater.  His  rendering  is  royally  faith- 
less; this,  indeed,  is  its  chief  interest.  Not  only 
does  Musset  cut  and  prune  a  dozen  pages  here, 
fifty  there,  but  he  enlarges  and  restores,  and  in 
a  very  decided  spirit,  invariably  adding  romantic 
embellishments  everywhere,  first  to  the  senti- 
ments: the  hero  of  the  English  original  forgave 
a  poor  creature  picked  up  in  the  gutter,  the  one 
in  the  version  assures  her  of  his  respect  and  ad- 
miration. He  adds  enormously  to  the  sums  of 
money:  two  or  three  hundred  francs  given  to  a 
young  man  in  trouble  become  twenty-five  thou- 
sand, fortunes  swell  beyond  measure,  and  the 
business  of  petty  lenders  assumes  mighty  pro- 
portions. He  embroiders  events  with  episodes 
from  his  own  stock :  reminiscences  of  the  dissect- 
ing-room, dark  adventures  to  suit  the  taste  of 
the  time.  In  brief,  there  was  a  general  parade 
of  plumes,  after  which  he  was  not  permitted  to 
go  on  laughing  at  Saint-Preux  or  at  Charlotte's 
friend. 

At  that  time  he  really  appeared  to  be  carried 
away  by  the  flood  of  romanticism.  His  great 
friends  of  the  Cenacle  made  him  recite  his  poems, 
gave  him  good  advice,  and,  it  is  needless  to  add, 
pushed  him  along  in  their  peculiar  path.  The 


30  THE   LIFE    OF 

drama  a  la  Hugo  was  applauded  greatly,  and 
Emile  Deschamps  gave  a  reception  for  a  reading 
of  Don  Paez,  at  which  rose  cries  of  admiration 
at  the  lines  about  the  dragon. 

A  dragon,  yellow  and  blue,  who  lay  sleeping 
in  the  hay.  There  were  other  cries  approving  of 
the  green  sleeves  of  the  Dawn: 

Behold  the  watchful  huntsmen, 
And  the  black  feet  of  falcons 
Perched  upon  their  sleeves  of  green. 

Sainte-Beuve  thought  this  beginner  too  far  in 
advance,  and  reproached  him  with  the  abuse  of 
enjambements  and  trivialities.  It  is  surprising 
that,  with  his  extraordinary  penetration,  he  did 
not  guess  at  once  that  Musset  was  a  romantic- 
born  classic,  which  is  as  much  as  saying  an  acci- 
dental romantic,  and  that  it  was  a  mistake  to 
count  on  him  absolutely,  drawn  this  way  and  that 
between  his  instincts  and  the  influence  of  sur- 
roundings. The  rest  of  the  Cenacle  were  excusa- 
ble for  not  suspecting  it.  Musset  did  not  con- 
ceal his  task  for  the  eighteenth  century,  but  we 
overlook  a  partiality  for  Crebillon  and  Clarissa 
Harlowe  in  a  runaway  from  college.  As  for  his 
very  significant  admiration  for  Voltaire's  poetry, 
that  was  not  taken  so  seriously  in  the  case  of  an 
apprentice  of  romanticism,  fed  on  Shakespeare 
and  saturated  with  Byron,  one  made  to  learn  his 
trade,  not  unprofitably,  in  Mathurin  Regnier.  I 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  31 

insist  on  these  details  because  the  Cenacle  at  a 
later  time  accused  Musset  of  desertion.  That 
was  unjust;  there  was  no  defection,  only  misun- 
derstanding. The  future  author  of  the  Nuits 
was  so  little  theirs,  body  and  soul,  as  they  fan- 
cied, that  he  always  gave  ear  to  other  counsels, 
though  of  far  less  authority.  We  may  recall  that 
the  family  did  not  like  the  new  literary  school. 
These  amiable  people  did  not  stop  at  tacit  dis- 
approval. They  withstood  the  tendencies  which 
they  deemed  destructive,  and  Musset's  letter  to 
Desherbiers,  a  passage  from  which  we  have  just 
read,  proves  that  their  effect  had  not  been  a  dead 
loss.  Here  are  other  fragments :  "  I  ask  pardon 
for  complicated  sentences ;  I  have  got  over  them, 
I  believe.  .  .  .  As  for  the  broken  rhythms  in 
the  lines,  I  think  that  they  do  not  harm  in  what 
may  be  called  the  recitative — that  is,  the  transi- 
tion of  sentiments  and  actions.  In  the  rest  they 
ought  to  be  rare.  I  will  ask  you  to  notice  the 
composition  more  than  the  details,  for  I  am  far 
from  having  a  fixed  method.  I  shall  change  a 
number  of  times  yet.  I  await  hints  from  you. 
My  friends  have  given  me  praises,  which  I  put 
into  my  rear  pocket.  I  owe  to  four  or  five  con- 
versations with  you  my  reforming  opinions  on 
very  important  points,  and  I  have  made  many 
reflections  since.  But  you  know  they  do  not  go 
so  far  as  to  make  me  love  Racine." 

Waiting  for  his  reflections  to  bear  their  fruit, 


32  THE    LIFE    OF 

good  or  bad,  he  wrote  at  full  speed  his  Tales 
of  Spain  and  Italy,  and  his  friends  noticed  in 
them  nothing  but  a  crescendo  of  impertinence 
toward  everything  that  the  bourgeois,  in  his  crust 
of  classical  prejudices,  made  it  his  duty  to  re- 
spect and  admire.  After  the  Songs  and  Don 
Paez  came  the  Chestnuts  from  the  Fire,  Portia, 
the  Ballad  to  the  Moon,  Mardoche,  and  the  last 
piece  was  the  most  impudent;  accordingly  all 
agreed  in  predicting  a  great  success  for  it.  Mus- 
set  had  decided  to  have  his  work  printed  in  order 
to  gain  the  right  to  quit  his  position  as  law-clerk 
which  his  father  had  imposed.  His  volume  came 
out  toward  the  1st  of  January,  1830. 

This  is  the  time  to  examine  the  drawing  of 
Deveria  at  the  head  of  this  volume.  It  repre- 
sents Musset  at  about  his  twentieth  year,  in  the 
costume  of  a  page,  which  he  liked  and  several 
times  wore.  To  judge  by  his  slender  waist  and 
his  beardless  and  boyish  face,  we  should  think 
him  younger  than  he  really  was.  In  doublet  and 
tights  he  has  the  haughty  grace  which  Clouet 
used  to  lend  to  his  models,  and  their  extreme  and 
refined  elegance.  His  physiognomy  is  somewhat 
lacking  in  fire,  and  this  through  no  fault  of  the 
artist.  His  face  was  not  at  all  times  glowing 
with  fire ;  it  was  as  changing  as  the  humor  which 
it  expressed.  There  were  two  Mussets  suiting 
the  moment  and  the  direction  of  the  breeze.  One, 
bashful  and  silent,  somewhat  cold  in  appearance, 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  33 

is  that  which  showed  itself  commonly  in  his  ear- 
lier youth,  even  after  the  uproar  caused  by  his 
debut.  A  college  friend  of  his,  who  saw  him 
very  frequently  down  to  the  spring  of  1833, 
assured  me  that  he  saw  hardly  any  other. 
This  is  the  Musset  whom  Lamartine  described 
"  stretched  out  nonchalantly  in  the  shade,  his 
elbow  on  a  cushion,  his  head  resting  on  his  hand, 
upon  a  divan  in  Nodier's  gloomy  parlor."  La- 
martine noticed  his  "  floating  locks,  his  eyes 
rather  dreamy  than  brilliant,"  his  "  modest  and 
habitual  silence  in  the  midst  of  the  bewildering 
tumult  of  a  babbling  company  of  women  and 
poets,"  and  he  took  no  further  notice  of  him;  it 
took  him  thirty  years  to  observe  anything  more. 
In  Victor  Hugo  by  a  Witness  of  his  Life  we 
find  a  neat  sketch  of  Musset  which  is  entirely 
different:  "With  his  steady,  clear  glance,  his 
dilating  nostrils,  and  his  widely  open  and  ver- 
milion lips."  This  is  the  one  who  showed  himself 
by  fits  and  starts — Musset  quivering  with  life 
and  passion,  whose  blue  eyes  darted  fire,  whom 
pleasure  enraptured,  and  who  was  overwhelmed 
by  the  least  emotion,  weeping  like  a  child;  the 
Musset  whom  a  delirium  would  seize  the  moment 
he  was  overtaken  by  fever,  who  was  the  prey  of 
every  inconsistency,  of  every  extreme.  He  was 
kind,  generous,  of  a  deep  and  passionate  deli- 
cacy of  feeling,  and  also  violent  and  capable  of 
great  harshness.  The  same  hour  saw  him  de- 


34   LIFE  OF  ALFRED  DE  MUSSET 

lightf  ully  tender  and  absurdly  confident  and  then 
suspicious  to  the  point  of  unkindness,  mingling 
in  the  same  breath  adoration  and  sarcasm,  suffer- 
ing hundredfold  the  pangs  which  he  was  in- 
flicting, and  next  showing  a  charming  regret, 
eloquent,  frank,  and  irresistible  repentance, 
throughout  which  he  loathed  and  tried  to  hum- 
ble himself,  taking  cruel  delight  in  making  his 
own  heart  bleed — a  heart  that  was  ever  suffering 
pain.  At  other  moments  he  was  a  dandy,  a  gay 
worldling,  full  of  sparkling  wit  and  banter,  at 
others  again  he  would  never  move  from  the  com- 
pany of  young  ladies,  whose  purity  enraptured 
him  and  with  whom  he  would  waltz  forever,  talk- 
ing nonsense  and  trifles.  Altogether  a  complex 
being,  not  inoffensive — far  from  it — and  some- 
times frightening  women  whom  he  liked;  but 
more  than  one  side  of  his  character  was  great, 
with  nothing  small  or  base — a  seductive,  engag- 
ing being,  who  could  not  be  otherwise  than  un- 
happy. 

Contemporaries  who  saw  him  in  these  vary- 
ing aspects  in  succession  have  given  utterance  to 
contradictory  judgments,  which  all  contained  a 
share  of  truth. 


CHAPTER  III 

TALES  OF  SPAIN  AND  ITALY 

THE  Tales  of  Spain  and  Italy  dismayed  the 
classicals.  Hitherto  nobody  had  ridiculed  them 
in  so  free  and  easy  a  style,  so  that  the  critics 
grasped  their  ferules,  and  Musset  caught  it  on 
his  knuckles.  I  believe,  though  I  dare  not  war- 
rant the  correctness  of  the  statement,  that  the 
first  article  was  one  in  the  Universal,  January 
22-23,  1830.  It  had  as  an  epigraph  the  lines 
from  Chestnuts  from  the  Fire: 

I  hope  baked  apples  none  will  throw 
To  lay  footlights  and  curtains  low. 

It  began  as  follows :  "  Behold  the  force  of 
conscience!  The  first  cry  of  M.  de  Musset, 
who  does  not  like  baked  apples,  is:  Pray  don't 
throw  baked  apples  at  me!  He  feels  that  the 
reader  will  be  tempted  to  fling  something  at  him, 
and  of  course  he  wards  off  the  danger  which  he 
most  dreads.  What  shall  we  fling  at  M.  de 
Musset  then? " 

The  critic,  F.,  at  once  begs  his  readers  to  par- 
don him  for  "  dragging  their  eyes  over  the  poetry 
of  M.  de  Musset,"  and  he  analyzes  the  volume 

35 


36  THE    LIFE    OF 

with  strong  signs  of  disgust.  The  faults  in  the 
French  revolt  him,  the  running  of  verse  into 
verse,  realistic  terms  like  pot  or  rags  pain  him. 
Poor  man! 

The  Figaro  of  February  4th  is  on  its  guard, 
in  fear  of  being  caught  by  some  joke:  "  Is  his 
book  a  parody?  Is  it  written  in  good  faith? " 
Figaro,  after  weighing  everything,  admits  the 
good  faith,  and  is  all  the  more  indignant.  He 
scolds  the  young  author  for  beginning  "  his  poet- 
ical life  "  by  exaggerations  and  mad  freaks,  and 
shows  him  to  what  he  is  exposing  himself:  "  Ridi- 
cule, once  stamped  on  the  brow  or  the  name  of 
a  writer,  often  stays  there  like  one  of  those  stains 
which  are  not  to  be  wiped  out  except  by  vigorous 
application  of  soap  and  brush."  M.  de  Musset 
deserves  to  escape  this  sad  fate,  for  here  and 
there  traces  of  talent  appear  in  his  collection  in 
despite  of  his  "  contempt  for  the  rules  of  good 
sense  and  of  the  language." 

The  same  day  the  Temps  declared  that  a  por- 
tion of  the  public  imagined  there  was  a  parody. 
For  its  part,  it  finds  a  very  personal  inspiration 
in  the  verses  of  the  newcomer.  It  recognizes  that 
there  are  charming  images  and  sparkling  dia- 
logues. But  the  characters  are  inconsistent;  for 
instance,  Camargo  "  contradicts  every  moment 
the  nature  of  her  Italian  heart  by  the  forms  of 
abstract  discourse,  by  metaphysical  exclamations, 
by  images  and  comparisons  quite  beyond  the  ma- 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  37 

terial  and  moral  world  of  Italy."  Would  it  be 
a  possible  thing  that  the  critic  had  not  recognized 
in  the  Chestnuts  from  the  Fire  a  double  parody 
of  tragedy  and  of  the  Romantic  form  ?  Camargo 
is  Hermione  compelling  Orestes- Abbe  Annibal 
to  kill  Pyrrus-Raphael — and  greeting  him  after- 
ward with  imprecations.  Respect  unto  the  "  na- 
ture of  the  Italian  soul "  had  been  the  least  anxi- 
ety to  the  author,  and  here  he  was  right.  In  the 
same  article,  on  Mardoche:  "  From  one  end  to 
the  other,  it  is  an  enigma  void  of  interest,  poor 
in  style  and  mere  buffoonery,  and  dull  at  that." 
The  Quotidienne  of  February  12th  is  relatively 
amiable,  seeing  in  the  beginner  "  a  poet  and  a 
madman,  one  inspired  and  a  beginner  in  rheto- 
ric " :  in  the  Tales,  a  "  strange  book,"  where  you 
are  tossed  "  from  the  height  of  the  finest  poetry 
to  the  most  incredible  baseness  in  diction,  from 
the  most  graceful  ideas  to  the  most  hideous  pic- 
tures, from  the  most  animated  and  happy  expres- 
sion to  the  most  inexcusable  barbarisms."  Don 
Paez  reveals  a  true  dramatic  sense,  and  contains 
profound  observations  with  details  of  great  poetic 
richness.  Apart  from  this  it  is  a  poem,  "  crowded 
with  enough  of  the  ridiculous  to  stock  a  com- 
plete literary  school."  The  same  critic,  in  a  sec- 
ond article,  February  23d,  declares  that  there 
is  more  promise  in  Musset  than  in  any  other 
of  the  poets  of  our  epoch,  a  compliment  which 
looks  too  much  as  if  it  had  been  put  in  with  the 


38  THE   LIFE   OF 

sole  aim  of  displeasing  Victor  Hugo;  but,  adds 
the  journal,  the  "  child  "  must  be  put  to  school 
if  he  wishes  to  amount  to  anything. 

The  Globe — this  paper  gave  proof  of  a  deal 
of  friendship  for  the  romantics — begins  on  Feb- 
ruary 17th  by  remarking  an  advanced  party 
in  whose  opinion  "  M.  Hugo  is  almost  station- 
ary .  .  .  M.  de  Vigny  classic,"  and  M. 
de  Musset  the  one  great  poet  in  France.  It 
avows  that,  so  far  as  the  Globe  is  concerned, 
the  first  impression  was  bad :  "  Two  things  in  his 
poems  are  astonishing  and  shocking — the  ugli- 
ness of  the  substance  and  the  fatuity  of  the 
form."  The  critic,  as  he  advanced  in  his  work, 
perceived  "  certain  beauties ;  then  these  grew,  and 
next  they  predominated  over  defects";  and  he 
is  awake  to  the  "  frank  inspiration,  force  in 
execution,  the  sentiment  and  the  movement 
lacking  in  so  many  poets.  M.  de  Musset,  it  is 
true,  exaggerates  some  of  the  defects  of  the 
new  school."  The  latter  "  breaks  the  lines,  M. 
de  Musset  dislocates  them;  the  former  resorts  to 
slidings  from  one  line  to  the  next,  he  lavishes 
them."  Yet,  despite  the  Chestnuts  from  the 
Fire,  which  "  revolts  "  and  "  disgusts  "  the  au- 
thor of  the  notice,  despite  Mardoche,  which  looks 
as  if  written  by  a  maniac,  the  Tales  announce 
"  an  original  and  genuine  talent." 

The  most  vinegary  criticism  has  remained 
closed  to  the  public.  It  came  from  Vendome. 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  39 

His  aunt,  the  canoness,  had  learned  by  the  public 
voice  that  she  had  a  poet-nephew,  and  she  sourly 
reproached  M.  de  Musset-Pathay  for  having 
brought  this  disgrace  upon  her.  She  had  al- 
ways blamed  her  brother  for  loving  literature 
too  much;  now  he  could  see  to  what  that  led. 

Forgiveness  of  injuries  did  not  figure  in  her 
credo.  As  a  chastisement  for  the  Tales,  the 
canoness  "  disowned  and  disinherited  the  males 
of  her  family  for  derogation,"  and  still  the  first 
edition  was  expurgated !  The  impious  conversa- 
tion of  Mardoche  with  the  beadle  has  been  sup- 
pressed. Meantime  Musset  read  the  newspapers 
with  great  calmness  and  attention,  and  without 
indignation.  He  did  not  call  his  critics  mere 
ushers  and  pedants.  He  did  not  lose  faith  in 
literature  and  in  humanity.  "  Just  criticism," 
said  he,  "  gives  more  impetuosity,  more  ardor. 
Unjust  censure  is  never  to  be  feared.  In  any 
case,  I  am  resolved  to  move  onward  with  a 
word  in  answer."  M.  de  Musset-Pathay,  who 
was  as  attentive  and  less  composed,  wrote  to  a 
friend  a  propos  of  the  cruel  article  in  the  Uni- 
versal: "  My  anxiety  as  to  possible  disputes  was 
happily  unfounded,  and  I  was  surprised  to  hear 
of  the  stoicism  of  our  young  philosopher.  I 
know  from  the  only  confidant  he  has,  Paul  (who 
betrays  him  to  me  alone),  that  he  profits  by  all 
the  criticisms,  and  is  giving  up  this  sort  of  com- 
position in  great  part.  The  confidant  adds  that 


40  THE   LIFE    OF 

my  surprise  will  be  great  at  the  change.  I  am 
wishing  and  waiting."  This  letter  is  to  M.  de 
Cairol,  April  2,  1830. 

Musset  was  modest  and  extremely  discerning. 
Hence  his  patient  and  attentive  attitude  when 
people  were  speaking  ill  of  his  poetry.  Withal 
he  had  been  indemnified  for  the  insults  of  the 
press.  Not  that  the  general  public  was  for  him. 
Good  folks,  so  Sainte-Beuve  relates,  saw  in  the 
book  "  only  the  Ballad,  and  would  hear  no  pleas- 
antry on  this  point  of  new  invention:  it  was  an 
outburst  of  broadest  laughter."  But  the  women 
and  the  younger  people  declared  for  Musset,  and 
all  the  ancient  retainers  of  the  classical  party  felt 
more  or  less  distinctly  that  here  was  something 
new. 

There  was,  indeed:  first,  sensations  of  singu- 
lar vividness,  expressed  with  great  power — "  hot 
youth,  that  tree  with  rugged  bark  that  cast  its 
shadow  on  path,  horizon,  and  on  all."  A  genu- 
ine sensation  is  so  strongly  brought  out,  on  the 
next  page,  that  the  reader  feels  its  influence,  and 
sees,  as  it  sweeps  by,  that  image  dear  to  Don 
Paez,  who  "  could  never  shut  his  eyes  and  not 
behold  his  mistress  passing,  white  with  eyes  of 
black."  Elsewhere  the  sensation  becomes  subtle, 
but  loses  no  strength.  It  is  sensuous  poetry,  but 
of  a  very  refined  and  very  delicate  quality: 
"  Night  is  of  power  to  make  women,  like  the 
flowers,  more  fair,  and  each  evening  breeze 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  41 

that  touches  them  steals  fragrance  sweeter  to 
inhale." 

In  other  places,  again,  an  accidental  sensation 
gives  the  poet  merely  an  epithet,  but  this  is 
enough  to  summon  up  a  picture:  "  Soft  and  mel- 
low, the  moonbeam  blended  long,  silvery  streams 
with  golden  flames  on  velvets  pale  and  marble 
gay."  Musset  had  seen  the  moonlight  glide 
through  the  stained  glass,  and  he  feels  compelled 
to  personify  it  to  interpret  the  impression  of 
something  airy  and  material  at  once,  which  might 
have  been  grasped,  and  which  flowed  neverthe- 
less through  the  windows,  though  they  were 
closed.  It  was  very  new,  very  modern,  or,  if  you 
will,  very  antique.  Homer  and  Virgil  had  epi- 
thets like  his,  and  before  a  written  or  chanted 
poetry  came  to  be,  the  early  myths  translated 
impressions  such  as  these.  So  Diana,  as  she 
comes  to  kiss  Endymion,  poured  through  the  net- 
work of  the  foliage  with  her  soft  and  supple  body. 

Further  he  is  very  antique  and  very  modern 
at  once  in  his  comparison  where  he  is  emancipated 
from  any  care  for  the  pompous  which  beset  so 
many  poets  of  the  eighteenth  century.  He  re- 
discovered the  rough  and  felicitous  bluntness  of 
the  older  poets,  their  skill  in  realistic  detail  which, 
striking  the  imaginations,  causes  the  scene  to 
rise  before  our  sight:  "  Slowly  round  and  round 
the  she-wolves  turn,  and  hold  their  gaunt  snouts 
toward  each  other." 


42  THE   LIFE    OF 

His  literary  training  had,  of  course,  mixed  this 
old  pagan  realism  with  elements  foreign  to  it. 
Musset  called  Regnier  his  first  master,  and,  in- 
deed, the  latter  appears  in  more  than  one  passage, 
as,  for  example,  in  the  case  of  the  spinners,  who, 
"  with  callous  hands,  shake  the  cotton  thread  and 
feebly  drop  their  chins  upon  their  knees." 

The  romantic  in  the  Tales  of  Spain  and  Italy 
might  thus  be  accounted  new.  Victor  Hugo,  in 
the  Orientates,  had  gone  so  far,  but  Musset  out- 
ran him  in  boldness.  His  dislocated  lines,  his 
riotous  metaphors  put  him  in  the  utmost  van  of 
the  revolutionary  host,  while  his  irony  and  tur- 
bulent animation  put  him  in  the  forlorn  hope 
whom  no  man  could  expect  to  keep  in  line.  He 
himself  had  taken  pains  to  give  warning  that 
every  one  would  waste  time  and  trouble  in  the 
attempt.  He  had  hinted  to  the  riming  school 
"  that  he  wanted  nothing  in  common  with  them; 
though  he  rimed  idee  with  fachee,  the  Muses 
came." 

Like  irreverence  touching  other  reforms,  this 
audacious  poet  had  allowed  himself  to  parody,  in 
the  Ballad  to  the  Moon,  the  rimes  and  images 
of  the  romantic  school,  and  he  proclaimed  the 
intention  to  express  what  he  felt,  not  what  it 
might  be  the  fashion  to  feel.  The  fashion  was 
all  for  distressing  and  finical  ways :  Musset  ven- 
tured to  be  cheerful,  and  made  fun  of  the  melan- 
choly bards.  "  As  for  melancholy,  it  has  a  flavor 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  43 

of  holes  in  stockings,  garret-rooms,  and  pennies 
worse  for  wear." 

He  did  not  deceive  his  masters  in  the  Cenacle; 
he  used  to  show,  as  plainly  as  could  be,  as  to  what 
points  he  parted  with  them.  As  to  telling  them 
where  he  would  be  on  the  morrow,  if  he  were 
warming  Candide  or  Manfred  over  again,  he 
would  have  been  puzzled  what  to  say.  He  did 
not  know,  and  had  no  one  to  help  him  to  have 
clear  sight  of  his  own  mind.  "  The  Tales  of 
Spain  and  Italy"  said  Sainte-Beuve,  "  presented 
a  sort  of  enigma  as  to  the  nature,  the  limits,  and 
the  destiny  of  this  talent."  An  enigma  whose 
obscurity  was  increased  by  the  queerest  jumble 
of  sophomoric  trivialities — "  by  the  small  size  of 
her  feet  she  was  Andalusian  and  a  countess  " — 
and  soaring  verses  such  as  genius  conceives  and 
talent  can  never  manufacture,  no  matter  how 
much  pains  it  may  take :  "  The  sunbeams  are 
splendid  on  the  crests  of  the  seas,  as  the  soldier, 
defeated,  shatters  his  spears."  How  could  a 
book  so  preposterous,  so  filled  with  exaggera- 
tions and  incongruities,  not  fail  to  shock  the  logi- 
cal and  delight  the  irrational?  Good  folks  had 
some  consolation  in  asserting  with  perfect  truth 
that  the  success  of  the  Tales  of  Spain  and  Italy 
was  due  to  scandal. 

The  culprit  kept  quiet  and  reflected,  finding 
truth  in  certain  critiques,  and  preparing  himself 
for  the  evolution  which  his  poetic  temperament 


44  THE   LIFE    OF 

rendered  inevitable  as  soon  as  he  became  his  own 
master.  "  Our  romantic  is  dehugotizing  himself 
completely,"  wrote  his  father,  on  the  19th  of 
September,  to  his  friend  Cairol.  There  was  no 
further  need  of  indiscretions  to  suspect  that  The 
Revue  de  Paris,  in  July,  published  the  literary 
manifesto  entitled  Secret  Thoughts  of  Rafael, 
which  the  Cenacle  took  for  a  disavowal  and  which 
was  but  a  declaration  of  independence.  Reading 
it  now  in  cool  blood,  we  hardly  can  comprehend 
how  any  one  could  have  made  a  mistake  about  it. 
Still  the  mistake  was  made,  and  Musset's  re- 
lations with  Hugo's  group  grew  cooler.  It  is 
right  to  add  that  Musset  betrayed  a  purpose  to 
walk  without  leading-strings  in  the  future.  The 
term  poetic  school  appeared  to  him  now  void  of 
sense.  "  We  discuss  a  good  deal,"  he  wrote  to 
Paul.  "  I  find,  indeed,  that  we  lose  too  much 
in  reasoning  and  hair-splitting.  I  met  Eugene 
Delacroix  one  evening  returning  from  the  thea- 
ter, and  we  discussed  painting  in  the  open  street, 
from  his  door  to  mine  and  from  mine  to  his, 
until  two  o'clock  in  the  morning;  we  could  not 
separate.  With  the  good  Antony  Deschamps,  I 
talked  from  eight  till  eleven  on  the  boulevard. 
When  I  leave  Nodier's  or  Deveria's,  I  argue  all 
the  way  in  the  street  with  one  or  the  other.  Have 
we  made  any  progress  for  all  this?  Could  we 
turn  off  a  better  line  in  a  poem  or  give  a  better 
touch  in  a  painting?  Each  one  of  us  has  within 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  45 

him  a  particular  sound  which  he  can  give  forth, 
like  violin  or  clarinet.  All  the  reasonings  in  crea- 
tion, could  never  bring  from  a  blackbird's  throat 
the  song  of  a  starling.  What  the  artist  or  poet 
requires  is  emotion.  When,  in  composing  a 
verse,  I  feel  a  certain  thrilling  of  the  heart  which 
I  know,  I  am  convinced  that  my  verse  is  of  the 
best  quality  that  I  can  be  delivered  of." 

Farther  on  in  the  same  letter,  "  Horace  de  V. 
told  me  a  thing  which  I  did  not  know :  that  since 
my  last  poems  they  are  all  saying  that  I  am  con- 
verted. Converted  to  what?  Do  they  fancy  that 
I  have  been  to  confession  to  Abbe  Delille,  or  that, 
by  reading  Laharpe,  I  have  been  touched  with 
grace?  Doubtless  they  are  expecting  that  in- 
stead of  saying,  *  Take  thy  sword  and  slay  him,' 
I  am  henceforth  to  say,  *  Weapon  thy  arm  with 
homicidal  glaive  and  sever  the  thread  of  his  days.' 
Nonsense  for  nonsense,  I  would  much  rather  re- 
commence the  Chestnuts  from  the  Fire  and  Mar- 
doche"  (August  14,  1831.) 

Months  more  elapsed  in  barren  discussion.  A 
deep,  moral  convulsion,  caused  by  his  father's 
death  in  April,  1832,  at  last  led  to  a  return  to 
labor,  and  old  friends  were  summoned  on  New 
Year's  eve  to  listen  to  the  Cup  and  the  Lips  and 
Of  What  Young  Maidens  Dream.  It  was  a  very 
chilly  meeting,  and  when  they  separated  the 
alienation  of  the  nursling  of  romanticism  from 
the  Cenacle  was  consummated.  From  that  mo- 


46  THE   LIFE    OF 

ment  forth  Musset  was  isolated.  He  had  wished 
and  sought  for  that. 

The  new  volume  appeared  just  at  the  end  of 
1832,  under  the  title,  Scene  in  an  Armchair. 
Critics  took  little  note  of  it.  Sainte-Beuve  had 
an  article,  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  of  January 
15,  1833,  in  which  Alfred  de  Musset  was  dis- 
cussed seriously,  and  classed  among  the  most  vig- 
orous artists  of  the  time.  One  newspaper  warmly 
commended  the  work,  two  others  dismissed  it 
with  abuse  as  an  ill-digested  mess,  a  work  for 
which  no  name  is  bad  enough,  wearisome  and 
rambling.  Most  journals  disdainfully  gave  him 
the  tribute  of  silence.  The  sullen  attitude  was 
continued  during  following  years,  and  it  corre- 
sponded to  that  of  the  general  public.  Musset 
had  suddenly  sunk  back  into  the  shade.  True 
success — that  which  is  not  forgotten  and  fixes  a 
writer's  definite  class — kept  him  waiting  long. 
He  beheld  glory  before  death  came,  but  he  did 
not  long  enjoy  it.  The  reasons  for  this  contin- 
ued eclipse  are  rather  complex. 

For  the  bitterness  of  the  journalists  he  was 
somewhat  to  blame.  Pretending  not  to  bear  them 
any  ill  will  for  their  insults,  he  had  not  hidden 
boyish  glee  when  they  all,  or  almost  all,  were 
caught  by  The  Ballad  to  the  Moon.  He  laughed 
like  a  downright  giddypate,  without  mercy,  in 
the  Secret  Thoughts  of  Rafaelj  at  their  great 
outlay  of  indignation  at  a  mere  pleasantry: 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  47 

"  They  say,  O  masters,  that  your  eyebrow,  as 
it  saw  that  moon,  that  dot  o'er  the  i,  assumed  the 
look,  the  frightful  look,  of  a  circumflex ! " 

The  Parisian  journalist  accepts,  if  it  must  be, 
the  fate  of  being  called  pedant,  or  even  silly, 
besotted  pedant.  But  nothing  in  the  world  is 
more  hateful  to  him,  more  intolerable,  exasper- 
ating, unforgettable,  than  to  be  convicted  of 
credulity.  The  critics  of  1830  long  maintained 
their  ill  will  for  the  young  gentleman  who 
"  quizzed  everybody." 

No  more  coteries  to  defend  him,  for  he  had 
fallen  out  with  the  Cenacle,  and  the  new  volume 
was  really  hard  to  understand.  Of  the  three 
poems  composing  it,  not  one  was  accessible  to  the 
many  unaided  by  commentary.  The  Cup  and 
the  Lips  was  at  first  glance  astonishing  through 
its  unusual  form.  The  chorus,  borrowed  from 
the  Greek  tragedy  and  expressing  ideas  by  no 
means  antique  in  a  modern  language,  troubled 
and  confounded  the  reader.  Further,  the  basis 
and  conception  of  the  piece  is  far  from  being 
distinct.  Various  rather  inconsistent  ideas  fol- 
low one  another,  and  are  mingled  in  confusion. 
Without  noticing  it  himself,  the  author  glides 
from  his  original  theme  into  another  an4  quite 
different  subject.  In  the  first  act  he  seems  to 
have  designed  to  construct  a  tragedy  of  pride  as 
Corneille  wrought  the  tragedy  of  the  will,  and 
to  have  endeavored  to  display  the  growth  of  pride 


48  THE    LIFE    OF 

in  a  strong  and  ardent  soul:  "  All,  even  patience, 
comes  to  us  from  pride." 

But  what  next?  Frank,  who  was  plunging 
into  life  with  so  much  pride  and  vainglory,  meets 
in  the  forest  Belcolore,  and  she  says  to  him, 
"  Mount  your  horse  and  come  to  supper  with 
me,"  and  the  subject  changes  all  of  a  sudden. 
Frank  is  now  the  man  whom  excess  has  contam- 
inated in  the  very  bloom  of  youth,  and  who  car- 
ries its  blight  in  his  heart.  "  Hapless  the  man 
when  excess  drives  a  first  nail  in  his  left  breast!  " 

Musset  again  and  again  has  come  back  to  this 
thought,  and  at  all  times  with  an  accent  of  sting- 
ing pain  which  betrays  self-examination  and 
harsh  regret. 

In  the  fifth  act,  the  graceful  idyl  of  Deidamia 
causes  the  subject  to  deviate  anew,  and  termi- 
nates the  drama  with  a  romanesque  event — a 
pure  accident,  unless  we  accept  the  interpreta- 
tion given  by  M.  Faguet  of  the  denouement 
of  the  Cup  and  the  Lips,  which  interpretation  is 
very  interesting,  because  it  omits  the  accident  and 
restores  to  the  poem  the  unity  which  was  lacking. 
According  to  him,  Frank  "  returns  to  his  boy- 
hood's love  as  to  a  rebirth  and  to  a  redemption 
.  .  .  and  is  unable  to  regain  it,  for  Belcolore — 
ihere  to  be  understood  as  a  symbol  for  the  specter 
of  debauchery — watches  him,  attracts  him,  slays 
him.  .  .  ." 

Whatever  the  truth  as  to  this  may  be,  Frank, 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  49 

of  all  Musset's  heroes,  is  the  most  Byronic;  and 
this  is  singular,  for  Musset,  in  the  very  dedica- 
tion to  the  Cup,  defended  himself  against  the 
charge  of  giving  way  to  the  influence  of  Man- 
freds  and  Laras. 

Byronicism  was  a  shred  of  the  romantic  mantle 
of  which  he  never  got  rid.  It  was  in  vain  that 
he  flung  it  away ;  the  gaudy  rag  would  suddenly 
come  back  to  his  shoulders.  We  are  to  see  it 
again  in  all  its  glitter  when  Musset  writes  Rolla 
and  the  Confession. 

A  public  which  had  not  lent  attention  to  the 
grand  and  tragic  imaginings  of  the  Cup  was 
hardly  fit  to  relish  that  pearl  of  poesy  which  is 
entitled  Of  What  Young  Maidens  Dream.  We 
must  have  a  lively  fancy  ourselves,  or  have  been 
put  to  school  in  the  fairy-world  of  Shakespeare, 
to  accept  without  hesitating  the  improbable  idea 
of  Laertes,  the  prudent  father  who  sings  sere- 
nades under  the  balcony  of  his  daughters  in  order 
that  they  may  have  their  little  romance  before 
the  expediency  match,  such  as  families  have  made 
since  time  began.  But  yet  see  how  far  old 
Laertes  was  in  the  right.  No  one  seconds  him. 
The  two  suitors  who  should  attend  to  serenades 
and  love-letters  are,  the  one  too  bashful,  the  other 
too  dull.  Irus  is  quite  silly,  Silvio  is  a  nobody, 
and  they  both  hamper  Laertes  instead  of  profit- 
ing by  his  lessons  and  climbing  up  the  silken 
ladder  into  the  azure  land.  But  such  is  the  force 


50  THE   LIFE    OF 

of  a  sound  idea  that  everything  is  settled  in  spite 
of  everything,  as  the  old  Duke  had  foreseen. 
Ninon  and  Ninette  had  breathed  the  poetry  of 
love  before  devoting  themselves,  like  nice,  good 
little  girls,  to  the  prose  of  marriage.  For  a  whole 
evening  they  will  have  been  poets  themselves,  and 
so  risen  one  round  in  the  scale  of  created  beings. 
Ninon  exclaims,  "  Earth,  winds,  and  waters  fill 
with  harmonies,"  and  Ninette,  "  Ye  palm-leaves 
scattering  love  upon  the  burning  breeze !  " 

In  this  little  piece  there  is  an  invigorating 
grace.  Never  before  had  any  one  lent  more  ex- 
quisite language  to  young  and  ingenuous  love. 
The  duet  between  Ninon  and  Silvio,  on  the  ter- 
race, was  an  act  of  faith  which  the  Tales  had  not 
led  the  reader  to  expect,  in  favor  of  chaste  and 
tender  passion,  the  treasure  of  pure  hearts.  More 
than  once  has  the  poet  come  back  to  the  theme, 
a  thing  which  has  always  brought  him  good-luck. 

In  the  last  poem,  Namouna,,  the  tone  changed 
again,  and  did  not  cease  to  change — now  cynical, 
now  eloquent  and  passionate,  now  filled  with 
emotion.  Musset  had  put  himself  into  it,  and 
we  know  whether  he  was  of  "  infinite  variety." 
He  abandoned  himself  to  his  fickle  moods,  espe- 
cially in  the  tirade  on  Don  Juan.  He  related 
his  own  dream  in  those  glittering  strophes  which 
paint  the  handsome  stripling  as  "loving,  loved 
of  all,  and  open  as  a  flower,"  whom  the  deifica- 
tion of  sensation  condemns  to  a  forlorn  search 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  51 

after  an  impossible  ideal,  and  who  dies  with  a 
smile  on  his  lips,  "  full  of  hope  in  his  ending 
path."  These  Don  Juans  unluckily  are  likely 
to  turn  into  Hollas,  and  when  Musset  saw  that 
it  was  too  late,  and  he  could  only  cry  out  with 
anguish  like  Frank. 

The  Spectacle,  it  is  to  be  noticed,  contains 
hardly  any  broken  lines  or  verses  passing  into 
those  following,  except  in  Namouna.  Musset's 
form  becomes  a  compromise  between  the  new 
school  and  the  old.  Poverty  of  rime  he  erects 
more  and  more  into  a  system.  '  You  will  find, 
dear  friend,  my  rimes  very  poor."  He  disowns 
the  obligatory  local  color,  manufactured  with 
Travelers'  Guides.  "  Bear  in  mind,"  he  says, 
"  that  I  have  filched  nothing  from  the  Library." 

Musset,  better  than  any  one  else,  knew  the 
value  of  local  color  drawn  out  of  the  guide-book. 
He  had  just  been  working  up  his  description  of 
the  Tyrol  in  the  Cup,  by  means  of  an  old  geo- 
graphical dictionary. 

He  had  broken  then  with  his  own  romantic 
audacities,  but  for  all  that  he  was  by  no  means 
reconciled  with  the  classicals,  whom  he  contin- 
ued to  chaff:  "  Body  and  soul  shall  go  two  by 
two,  like  yoked  oxen  or  classical  verses."  Placed 
here  between  the  two  camps,  nothing  was  left 
him  but  to  remain  himself.  Though  lacking  a 
people  of  worshipers,  he  had  his  own  handful 
of  faithful  admirers — those  who,  from  the  out- 


52     LIFE  OF  ALFRED  DE  MUSSET 

set,  had  discerned  the  personal  accent  amid  bor- 
rowed notes,  asked  the  author  of  Don  Juan  to 
be  Musset,  still  Musset,  ever  Musset.  His  mother 
relates,  in  a  letter  written  in  1834,  that  a  dancing- 
partner  of  his  sister,  a  polytechnic,  said  to  her: 
"  Mademoiselle,  they  tell  me  that  you  are  a  sis- 
ter of  M.  Alfred  de  Musset."  "Yes,  sir,  I 
have  the  honor."  "  You  are  very  fortunate, 
mademoiselle."  Madame  de  Musset-Pathay 
adds  that  the  Polytechnic  School  swears  only 
by  him.  At  the  moment  when  Madame  de  Mus- 
set-Pathay was  tracing  these  lines,  the  youth  of 
her  son  was  over.  He  was  twenty-three.  The 
six  years  elapsed  since  his  leaving  college  had 
been  by  no  means  heavy  years.  They  are  all 
summed  up  in  one  of  his  songs,  a  poem  smiling 
and  melancholy:  "  To  my  heart  I  said,  is  it  not 
enough  to  love  my  love?  "  He  answers,  "  Cease- 
less changing  lends  sweetness  unto  passing  joys." 
The  period  of  happy  recklessness  has  gone  by. 
We  come  to  the  great  crisis  of  Musset's  life.  He 
is  to  love  truly  for  the  first  time,  and  is  not  to 
find  that  love's  woes  are  "  sweet  and  dear." 


CHAPTER   IV 

GEORGE   SAND 

GEORGE  SAND  to  Sainte-Beuve  (March,  1833) : 
"  By  the  way,  after  reflection,  I  wish  you  not  to 
bring  Alfred  de  Musset.  He  is  too  much  of  a 
dandy,  we  should  not  agree,  and  I  should  be 
more  curious  than  interested  to  see  him.  I  think 
it  imprudent  to  satisfy  all  one's  curiosities  and 
better  to  obey  one's  sympathies.  So,  instead  of 
him,  I  will  ask  you  to  bring  Dumas,  in  whose 
art  I  have  found  soul,  to  say  nothing  of  talent." 

Some  time  after,  Alfred  de  Musset  and  George 
Sand  met  at  a  dinner  given  by  the  Revue  des 
Deux  Mondes.  They  were  seated  side  by  side, 
and  agreed  to  meet  again.  Letters  of  Musset 
without  date — I  have  them  under  my  eyes — 
form  a  sort  of  prologue  to  the  drama.  The  two 
are  not  beyond  ceremonious  formulas  and  com- 
monplace courtesies.  The  first  letter  to  mark 
an  advance  in  intimacy  was  written  about  Lelia, 
which  George  Sand  had  sent  to  Musset.  He 
returns  warm  thanks,  and  through  his  compli- 
ments he  lets  slip  the  avowal  that  he  would  be 
most  happy  to  be  admitted  to  the  rank  of  com- 
rade. The  "  Madame "  disappears  forthwith 
from  the  correspondence.  He  grows  bold,  and 

53 


54  THE    LIFE    OF 

declares  himself,  first  very  nicely  and  the  second 
time  with  passion,  and  destiny  is  fulfilled  for 
them  both.  Without  circumlocution  she  an- 
nounces to  Sainte-Beuve  that  she  is  Musset's 
mistress,  adding  that  he  may  tell  anybody;  she 
asks  no  discretion  on  his  part.  In  this  relation, 
she  goes  on,  "  far  from  being  distressed  and  mis- 
understood, I  find  a  candor,  an  integrity,  a  ten- 
derness which  intoxicates  me.  Truly  a  young 
man's  love  and  a  comrade's  friendship,  a  some- 
thing of  which  I  had  no  idea,  which  I  did  not 
expect  to  meet  anywhere,  and  above  all  in  this. 
This  affection  I  denied,  repelled,  refused  at  first, 
and  then  I  surrendered,  and  now  I  am  happy 
for  having  done  so.  I  surrendered  more  from 
friendship  than  through  love,  and  the  friendship 
which  I  never  knew  has  revealed  itself  to  me 
without  one  of  the  pangs  I  expected  to  suffer." 
(August  25, 1833.) 

"  I  have  been  sick,  but  I  am  well  now.  And 
more,  I  am  happy,  very  happy,  my  friend. 
Every  day  I  bind  myself  more  closely  to  him; 
every  day  I  see  those  little  things  in  him  fade 
away  which  once  made  me  suffer;  every  day  I 
behold  the  beautiful  things  of  my  admiration 
gleam  and  shine  in  him.  And  again,  above  all 
that  he  is,  he  is  a  kind  fellow,  and  this  familiar 
friendship  is  as  delightful  as  his  preference  was 
precious."  (September  21st.) 

At  the  end  of  September  she  writes :  "  In  Lelia 


ALFRED    DE    MUSSET  55 

I  blasphemed  nature,  and  perhaps  God.  God, 
who  is  not  cruel,  and  whose  nature  is  not  to  take 
vengeance  on  us,  has  closed  my  mouth  by  restor- 
ing to  me  the  youth  of  the  heart,  forcing  me  to 
confess  that  he  has  bestowed  upon  us  joys  which 
are  sublime." 

Such  was  the  opening  of  this  famous  liaison 
which,  in  a  biography  of  Alfred  de  Musset,  is 
not  to  be  passed  over  in  silence,  not  for  the  igno- 
ble pleasure  of  stirring  over  again  a  mess  of  idle 
gossip  and  of  scandal,  nor  because  it  involves  two 
famous  writers,  but  because  it  exercised  a  decisive 
influence  upon  Musset,  and  also  because  it  af- 
fords an  unique  and  extraordinary  example  of 
what  the  romantic  spirit  could  do  with  beings 
who  had  fallen  a  prey  to  it.  The  correspond- 
ence of  these  illustrious  lovers,  in  which  we  fol- 
low step  by  step  the  ravages  of  the  monster,  is 
one  of  the  most  precious  psychological  docu- 
ments of  the  first  part  of  the  last  century.  We 
follow  in  it  the  mad  and  painful  endeavors  of  a 
man  and  a  woman  of  genius  to  live  the  senti- 
ments of  a  literature  which  sought  its  heroes  out- 
side of  all  reality,  and  to  exist  as  much  above  or 
beyond  nature  as  Hernani  or  Lelia.  Nature  is 
seen  avenging  herself  severely  on  those  who  have 
offended  her,  and  condemning  them  to  reciprocal 
tortures.  Following  this  correspondence,  we 
shall  essay  to  recount  a  history  which  may  be 
called  unknown,  though  the  subject  of  so  much 


56  THE    LIFE    OF 

talk,  for  all  who  have  busied  themselves  there- 
with have  undertaken  to  disfigure  it.  Paul  de 
Musset  designedly  travesties  the  facts  in  his  Biog- 
raphy. Elle  et  Lui,  George  Sand's  book,  and 
Paul  de  Musset's  answer,  Lui  et  Elle,  are  works 
of  rancor,  born  of  a  state  of  war  caused  and  kept 
up  by  friends,  full  of  good  purposes,  without 
doubt,  but  certainly  very  badly  inspired.  Even 
the  letters  of  George  Sand  printed  in  her  Cor- 
respondence have  been  mutilated  to  suit  the  needs 
of  her  cause.  Not  one  of  those  about  the  two 
reflected,  that  by  belittling  the  other  he  was 
making  his  own  hero  equally  small. 

During  the  earlier  months  they  had  no  need 
of  letters,  but  Musset  has  filled  this  gap  in  the 
Confession,  the  last  three  parts  of  which  are  the 
picture — pitiless  for  himself,  triumphant  for  his 
mistress — of  his  life  with  George  Sand.  In  these 
he  never  spared  himself.  His  serious  defects  of 
character,  his  offenses  from  the  very  first,  are 
depicted  in  them  with  a  kind  of  fury,  and  with 
what  truth,  an  unpublished  fragment  by  George 
Sand  bears  witness :  "  I  tell  you,  this  Confession 
has  stirred  me  deeply,  in  fact.  The  smallest  de- 
tails of  an  unhappy  intimacy  are  so  faithfully, 
so  minutely  set  down,  from  the  first  hour  to  the 
last,  from  the  sister  of  charity  to  the  proud  in- 
sensee,  that  on  closing  the  book  I  burst  into  tears 
like  a  silly  creature."  (To  Madame  d'Agoult, 
May  25,  1836.) 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  57 

Having  put  all  the  wrongdoing  upon  himself, 
he  poetized  the  conclusion.  Let  us  call  to  mind, 
reread  this  story  moving  on  with  breathless 
swiftness :  we  shall  see,  day  by  day,  hour  by  hour, 
the  steps  of  this  anguish  and  adoration,  summed 
up  in  the  cry  of  distress  uttered  by  George  Sand 
at  the  moment  of  their  rupture:  "Enough  of 
you,  I  wish  no  more;  yet  I  cannot  live  without 
you!  "  (To  Musset,  February  or  March,  1835.) 
And  the  more  we  read,  the  clearer  the  eye  sees 
that  what  was  to  happen  inevitably  came  to  pass. 
Each  of  them  wished  and  exacted  the  impossible. 
Musset,  for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  was  passion- 
ately in  love,  but  behind  him  was  a  libertine  past 
which  clung  to  him  like  a  Nessus  shirt,  and  con- 
strained his  intelligence  to  torture  his  heart. 
Like  Portia's  sinner,  "  he  did  not  believe,"  and 
he  felt  a  despairing  need  of  believing.  He 
dreamed  of  a  love  above  all  other  loves — to  be  at 
once  a  delirium  and  a  worship.  Well  he  under- 
stood that  neither  of  them  had  reached  such  a 
point,  but  he  could  not  be  reconciled,  passing  his 
time  trying  to  scale  the  heaven  and  falling  back 
into  the  mire,  until  he  conceived  ill  will  against 
George  Sand  for  his  own  defeat.  A  quarter  of 
an  hour  after  having  treated  her  "  as  an  idol,  as  a 
divinity,"  he  insulted  her  with  jealous  suspicions, 
with  outrageous  questions  concerning  her  past. 
"A  quarter  of  an  hour  after  affronting  her,  I 
was  on  my  knees;  as  soon  as  I  ceased  to  accuse, 


58  THE   LIFE   OF 

I  was  begging  pardon.  Then  a  delirium  unheard 
of  before,  a  fever  of  delight,  would  seize  hold  of 
me;  I  would  almost  lose  my  reason  by  the  vio- 
lence of  my  transports  of  joy;  I  knew  not  what 
to  do,  what  to  say,  what  to  imagine,  in  order  to 
repair  the  harm  which  I  had  done.  I  would  take 
Brigitte  in  my  arms,  and  I  would  make  her  re- 
peat a  hundred  times,  a  thousand  times,  that  she 
loved  me  and  forgave  me.  Then  outbursts  would 
last  whole  nights,  during  which  I  never  ceased 
to  speak,  to  weep,  to  grovel  at  her  feet,  to  in- 
toxicate myself  with  a  boundless  passion,  as  en- 
ervating as  insensate."  The  day  brought  doubt 
back,  for  the  divinity  was  only  a  woman  whom 
genius  did  not  shelter  from  human  weakness,  and 
who,  like  him,  had  a  past.  There  were  beautiful 
and  glowing  suns  between  the  whirlwinds.  Mus- 
set,  repentant,  grew  gentle  and  submissive  as  a 
child.  He  was  all  tenderness,  all  respect.  He 
would  make  his  mistress  live  among  adorations, 
would  exalt  her  above  all  creatures,  and  intoxi- 
cate her  with  a  passion  of  such  violence  as  to 
fling  him  pale  and  fainting  at  her  feet.  He  is 
mute  in  his  rage  at  himself;  as  to  these  dead 
calms,  he  says:  "Those  were  happy  days:  of 
them  we  are  not  to  speak,"  and  he  passes  on. 

George  Sand — she  also  struggled  against  a 
chimera  and  the  reality.  She  had  constructed 
for  herself  regarding  Musset,  who  was  six  years 
her  junior,  a  half -motherly  ideal  which  she 


ALFRED   DE    MUSSET  59 

thought  very  lofty,  and  which  was  only  very 
false.  She  drew  from  this  a  proud  compassion 
for  her  "  poor  child,"  so  weak  and  unreasonable, 
and  she  caused  him  to  feel  somewhat  overmuch 
her  superiority  as  a  guardian  angel.  She  would 
scold  him  with  infinite  gentleness  and  reason  (in 
their  letters  she  always  had  reason  on  her  side), 
but  this  impeccable  voice  ended  by  irritating 
Musset.  He  could  not  refrain  from  an  ironical 
smile,  a  bantering  allusion,  and  the  storm  broke 
out  again. 

Nevertheless,  both  cherished  their  chains,  be- 
cause the  sweetness  of  hours  of  serenity  appeared 
far  greater  than  the  bitterness  of  the  evil  time. 
Some  astonished  friends  blamed  them.  They 
were  meddling  in  what?  George  Sand  answered 
with  great  common  sense  to  one  of  the  indiscreet : 
"  There  are  so  many  things  between  two  lovers 
of  which  they  alone  can  be  judges!  " 

The  autumn  of  1833  was  interrupted  by  the 
excursion  to  Fontainebleau,  which  they  have  cele- 
brated in  turn  and  cursed  in  verse  and  prose. 
December  saw  them  on  the  way  to  Italy  together. 
The  stories  of  this  journey,  and  of  its  sequel, 
have  so  little  connection  with  the  reality  that  here 
we  must  be  specific  and  fix  the  dates,  in  order, 
once  for  all,  to  restore  the  truth  and  the  fact. 
The  heroes  in  the  drama — we  cannot  repeat  this 
too  often — have  only  to  gain,  by  light  dispelling 
obscurity. 


60  THE   LIFE    OF 

On  the  22d  of  December  they  embarked  at 
Marseilles,  made  a  short  stop  at  Genoa,  another 
at  Florence,  and  on  the  28th  or  29th  they  were 
off  again  for  Venice,  where  they  arrived  in  the 
early  part  of  January.  George  Sand  had  been 
sick  since  they  were  in  Genoa,  and  on  the  very 
day  of  their  reaching  Venice  she  took  to  her  bed, 
where  the  fever  kept  her  for  two  weeks.  On 
January  28th  she  is  at  last  enabled  to  report  to 
her  friend  Boucoiran  that  she  is  doing  well,  phys- 
ically and  morally,  "  but  this  is  a  mere  respite." 
On  the  4th  of  February  she  writes  again:  "I 
have  just  been  sick  again,  for  five  days,  with  a 
frightful  dysentery.  My  traveling  companion 
is  very  sick,  too.  This  we  do  not  boast  of,  be- 
cause we  have  in  Paris  a  crowd  of  enemies  who 
would  be  glad  of  it.  They  would  say,  *  They 
have  been  in  Italy  for  amusement,  but  now  they 
have  the  cholera !  What  a  pleasure  for  us !  They 
are  sick! '  Next,  Madame  de  Musset  would  be 
in  despair  if  she  were  to  learn  of  her  son's  sick- 
ness, so  not  a  whisper!  He  is  not  in  a  disquiet- 
ing state,  but  it  is  very  sad  to  see  one  whom  we 
love,  and  who  is  generally  so  kind  and  so  cheer- 
ful, in  a  languishing  and  suffering  condition. 
So,  then,  my  heart  is  troubled,  like  my  stomach." 
Musset  was  at  the  beginning  of  his  great  malady. 
The  two  lovers  had  just  had  their  first  falling 
out,  which  does  not  mean  that  they  had  ceased 
to  see  each  other.  Musset's  album,  which  is  still 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  61 

extant,  does  not  for  an  instant  omit  representing 
George  Sand — now  in  traveling  garb,  now  in 
home  attire,  as  an  Oriental  smoking  her  pipe,  or 
a  tourist  bargaining  for  some  trinket.  On  one 
page  she  is  looking  roguishly  at  Musset  across 
her  fan,  on  another  she  is  smoking  a  cigarette 
very  serenely.  We  turn,  keep  on  turning,  and 
there  she  is  always,  and  two  lines  of  Musset,  al- 
most the  last  that  he  published,  come  back  to 
mind: 

O  memory  importunate 
Take  those  eyes  away  that  I  must  ever  see. 

Nevertheless,  they  were  at  odds.  Musset  had 
been  violent  and  brutal.  He  had  brought  tears 
from  those  great,  dark  eyes  which  haunted  him 
until  his  death,  and  he  had  not  run  in  haste  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  afterward  to  beg  forgiveness. 
His  sickness  caused  all  to  be  forgotten.  In  their 
romance,  it  opens  a  new  chapter,  which  is  touch- 
ing to  the  point  of  absurdity. 

On  the  5th  of  February  he  is  suddenly  in  dan- 
ger. "  I  am  consumed  with  anxieties,  overcome 
with  fatigue,  sick,  and  in  despair.  Keep  abso- 
lute silence  as  to  Alfred's  sickness  because  of  his 
mother,  who  would  hear  of  it  infallibly,  and  die 
of  grief."  (To  Boucoiran.) 

On  the  8th  she  writes  to  the  same  correspond- 
ent: "  He  is  really  in  danger.  The  brain  nerves 
are  attacked  so  violently  that  his  delirium  is 


62  THE    LIFE    OF 

frightful  and  uninterrupted.  To-day,  however, 
there  is  an  extraordinary  improvement.  Reason 
has  returned  fully,  and  his  tranquillity  is  perfect. 
But  last  night  it  was  horrible.  Six  hours  of  such 
frenzy  that,  in  spite  of  two  strong  men,  he  ran 
about  the  room  naked.  Cries,  songs,  howling, 
convulsions — O  God !  what  a  spectacle !  " 

Musset  owed  his  life  to  the  devotion  of  George 
Sand  and  of  a  young  physician  named  Pagello. 
Hardly  was  he  convalescent  when  the  vertigo  of 
the  sublime  and  the  impossible  seized  the  lovers 
once  more.  They  conceived  the  most  fantastic 
deviations  of  sentiment,  and  their  home  was  the 
theater  of  scenes  which  in  novelty  exceeded  the 
most  daring  pranks  in  contemporary  literature. 
Musset,  always  eager  to  make  atonement,  sacri- 
ficed himself  to  Pagello,  who  in  turn  had  yielded 
to  the  fascination  of  the  great,  dark  eyes.  Pa- 
gello became  a  partner  with  George  Sand  in 
recompensing  the  voluntary  and  heroic  victim  by 
means  of  a  "  holy  friendship."  George  Sand 
reminds  Musset,  in  a  letter  of  the  next  summer, 
how  simple  that  all  appeared  to  them.  "  I  loved 
him  like  a  father,  and  you  were  the  child  of  us 
both."  She  recalls  to  him,  also,  their  solemn  emo- 
tions "  when  at  Venice  you  extorted  from  him 
the  avowal  of  his  love  for  me,  and  he  swore  to 
make  me  happy.  Oh!  that  night  of  enthusiasm 
when,  in  spite  of  us,  you  joined  our  hands  and 
said,  '  You  love  each  other,  and  yet  you  love  me ; 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  63 

me  you  have  saved — body  and  soul/  '  They  had 
dragged  the  good  Pagello  along,  ignorant  as  he 
was  even  of  the  name  of  romanticism,  in  their 
ascent  toward  madness.  He  said  to  George 
Sand,  with  tender  feeling,  "  our  love  for  Al- 
fred." George  Sand  repeated  it  to  Musset,  who 
shed  tears  of  enthusiastic  joy  on  hearing  it. 

Still  Pagello  kept  some  remnant  of  good  sense. 
As  a  physician,  he  judged  that  the  state  of 
chronic  exaltation  which  did  not  hinder  Musset 
from  being  in  love — quite  the  contrary — was  of 
no  advantage  to  a  man  hardly  recovering  from 
brain  fever.  He  recommended  a  separation, 
which  came  to  pass  on  April  1st  or  March  31st, 
Musset  departing  for  France.  On  the  6th 
George  Sand  gives  to  her  friend  Boucoiran,  in 
a  confidential  letter,  the  medical  reasons  for  this 
decision,  and  she  adds :  "  He  was  still  too  delicate 
to  undertake  this  long  journey,  and  I  am  not  free 
from  anxiety  as  to  the  manner  in  which  he  will 
endure  it.  But  it  was  more  injurious  for  him 
to  stay  than  to  go,  and  every  day  devoted  to 
awaiting  the  return  of  health  delayed,  instead 
of  accelerating  it.  We  have  parted,  perhaps  for 
some  months,  perhaps  forever.  Heaven  knows 
now  what  will  become  of  my  head  and  my  heart. 
I  feel  that  I  have  strength  to  live,  to  work,  to 
suffer." 

"  The  manner  in  which  I  became  separated 
from  Alfred  gave  me  much  to  think  about.  It 


64  THE    LIFE    OF 

was  a  delight  to  me  to  see  this  man — so  frivolous, 
an  unbelieving  atheist — in  love;  so  incapable  (so 
it  seemed  to  me  at  first)  of  earnest  attachment, 
become  good,  affectionate,  and  true  from  day  to 
day.  While  at  times  I  suffered  from  the  differ- 
ences of  our  characters,  and  above  all  the  dispar- 
ity of  our  ages,  still  more  often  I  have  had  reason 
to  glory  in  the  other  bonds  uniting  us.  There  is 
in  him  a  fund  of  affection,  kindness,  and  sincer- 
ity which  ought  to  make  him  adorable  to  all  those 
who  may  know  him  well  and  not  judge  him  by 
his  lighter  conduct."  "  I  doubt  our  ever  becom- 
ing lovers  again.  We  made  no  promises  as  to 
this,  but  we  shall  always  love  each  other,  and 
life's  sweetest  moments  will  be  those  which  we 
can  pass  together." 

Musset  writes  to  Venice,  on  all  the  stages  of 
the  journey,  letters  which  are  marvels  of  passion 
and  delicacy,  of  pathetic  eloquence  and  thrilling 
poetry.  Here  and  there  is  an  emphatic  stress,  a 
declamatory  touch,  but  that  was  the  taste  of  the 
time  and,  so  to  speak,  the  poetic  of  this  style  of 
composition. 

He  writes  to  her  that  he  deserved  to  lose  her, 
because  he  knew  not  how  to  honor  her  when  he 
possessed  her,  and  because  he  has  caused  her  deep 
suffering.  At  night,  in  his  room  at  the  inns,  he 
shed  tears,  and  is  nevertheless  almost  happy,  al- 
most joyful  because  he  can  relish  the  bliss  of 
sacrifice.  He  has  left  her  in  the  hands  of  a  man 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  65 

of  heart  who  will  render  her  happy,  and  he  is 
full  of  gratitude  to  this  noble  fellow;  he  loves 
her,  cannot  refrain  from  tears  as  he  thinks  of  her. 
She  may  try  to  be  but  an  endeared  brother  to 
the  absent,  it  will  be  in  vain,  for  she  will  forever 
remain  his  one  and  only  mistress. 

George  Sand  to  Musset  (April  3d) :  "  Do  not 
be  anxious  about  me;  I  am  strong  as  a  horse; 
but  do  not  tell  me  to  be  cheerful  and  calm.  That 
will  not  come  so  soon.  Ah!  who  will  take  care 
of  you,  and  of  whom  shall  I  take  care?  Who 
will  have  need  of  me,  and  henceforth  whom  shall 
I  nurse?  How  shall  I  do  without  the  good  and 
the  evil  which  you  did  me? 

"  Think  not,  Alfred,  that  I  can  be  happy  in 
the  thought  of  having  lost  your  heart.  It  mat- 
ters but  little  whether  I  have  been  your  mistress 
or  your  mother!  Whether  I  have  inspired  you 
with  love  or  friendship,  whether  I  have  been 
happy  or  unhappy  with  you,  are  all  questions 
that  make  no  change  in  the  state  of  my  soul  now. 
I  know  that  I  love  you  now,  and  that  is  all." 
(April  15th.) 

Her  question  is  how  could  so  maternal  an  af- 
fection engender  all  this  bitterness :  "  Why  have 
I,  who  was  ready  to  give  you  all  my  blood  to 
bring  you  one  night  of  rest  and  calm,  become  a 
torment  to  you,  a  plague,  a  specter?  When  these 
frightful  memories  beset  me  (and  at  what  hour 
do  they  leave  me  in  peace?),  I  become  insane 


66  THE    LIFE    OF 

almost,  and  cover  my  pillow  with  tears,  hearing 
your  voice  calling  me  in  the  silence  of  the  night. 
Now  who  shall  call  me?  Who  shall  have  need 
of  my  watchings?  In  what  shall  I  use  the 
strength  which  I  have  gathered  for  you,  and 
which  now  is  turning  against  me?  Oh,  my  child, 
my  child!  How  I  need  your  affection  and  your 
forgiveness !  Speak  not  of  mine,  never  call  your- 
self guilty  toward  me.  How  much  do  I  know 
about  the  past?  No  more  than  this  do  I  remem- 
ber, that  we  have  been  very  unhappy  and  we  have 
parted.  But  I  know,  I  feel,  that  we  shall  love 
each  other  to  the  end  of  life.  .  .  .  The  feeling 
which  binds  us  is  closed  against  so  many  things 
that  it  cannot  be  compared  to  any  other.  The 
world  will  never  understand  it  in  the  least.  So 
much  the  better!  We  shall  love  each  other,  and 
we  shall  laugh  in  its  face! 

"  I  am  living  almost  alone.  Pagello  comes  to 
dine  with  me.  I  spend  the  most  delicious  mo- 
ments of  the  day  with  him  talking  of  you!  He 
has  so  much  feeling  and  kindness,  and  under- 
stands my  sadness  so  well!  He  respects  it  re- 
ligiously! " 

Her  letters  were  more  generous  than  prudent. 
They  acted  powerfully  upon  a  tender  sensitive- 
ness already  too  much  excited  by  disease.  Mus- 
set  had  reached  Paris  on  April  12th,  and  had  at 
once  plunged  head  first  into  society  and  its  pleas- 
ures, hoping  that  diversion  would  put  an  end  to 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  67 

the  sorrow  which  was  wasting  him  away.  On 
the  19th  he  begs  his  love  not  to  write  to  him  any 
more  in  such  a  tone,  and  rather  to  tell  him  of 
her  present  happiness;  this  is  the  only  thought 
which  revives  his  courage.  On  the  30th  he  thanks 
her  with  rapture  for  maintaining  her  love  for 
him,  and  blesses  her  for  her  beneficent  influence. 
He  has  already  renounced  the  life  of  pleasure, 
and  to  his  grand  George  he  owes  the  strength  to 
have  done  so.  She  has  uplifted  him ;  she  has  torn 
him  from  his  evil  past;  she  has  revived  faith  in 
a  heart  knowing  only  how  to  deny  and  to  blas- 
pheme; if  ever  he  achieves  anything  great,  he 
will  owe  it  all  to  her. 

He  continues  his  talk  about  Pagello,  going  so 
far  as  to  say,  "  When  I  beheld  that  worthy 
Pagello,  I  recognized  in  him  the  good  part  of 
myself,  but  pure,  free  from  the  incurable  taints 
which  poisoned  it  in  me.  This  is  the  reason  why 
I  discerned  that  I  must  depart."  However,  we 
may  note  a  faint  change  in  his  friendship  for 
Pagello  as  soon  as  he  has  come  home  to  Paris. 
It  seems  that  in  setting  forth  again  in  that  jeer- 
ing city,  he  conceived  a  vague  suspicion  that  the 
"  ideal  bond,"  of  which  all  three  were  so  proud, 
might  be  a  mistake,  a  ridiculous  mistake. 

On  the  ensuing  page  he  makes  confession  of 
childishness.  He  has  found  a  little  broken  comb 
used  by  George  Sand,  and  goes  everywhere  with 
that  bit  of  wreckage  in  his  pocket.  Farther  on: 


68  THE   LIFE    OF 

"  I  am  going  to  write  a  novel  on  it.  I  should 
so  much  like  to  write  our  history.  It  seems  to 
me  that  that  would  cure  me,  and  lift  up  my  heart. 
I  would  fain  build  you  an  altar,  were  it  with 
my  bones." 

This  plan  resulted  in  the  Confession  of  a  Child 
of  the  Century.  George  Sand,  on  her  side,  had 
already  begun  to  work  the  mine  of  souvenirs. 
The  first,  the  Letters  of  a  Traveler,  was  finished, 
and  announced  to  Musset.  We  now  shall  have, 
down  to  the  end  of  the  tragedy,  something  like 
a  faint  smell  of  printer's  ink.  We  must  resign 
ourselves;  it  is  the  ransom  for  the  loves  of  liter- 
ary folk,  to  be  settled  even  with  Musset,  who 
was  as  little  of  an  author  as  could  be. 

The  letters  from  Venice  continued  to  throw  oil 
on  the  fire.  George  Sand  could  not  contrive  to 
hide  the  fact  that  memory  of  the  turning,  tumul- 
tuous passion  of  yore  was  rendering  present 
pleasure  very  flat.  To  Pagello  she  was  grateful, 
and  he  was  all  care  and  attention.  "  He  is  an 
angel  of  sweetness,  goodness,  and  devotion." 
But  life  with  him  was  a  trifle  colorless  in  com- 
parison. "  I  was  not  used  to  enthusiasm,  and 
sometimes  I  miss  it.  Here  I  am  not  Madame 
Sand ;  my  worthy  Pietro  has  not  read  Lelia,  and 
I  believe  he  would  never  understand  a  syllable 
of  it.  For  the  first  time  I  love  without  passion. 
Pagello  is  neither  suspicious  nor  nervous.  Great 
qualities,  and  still —  Oh,  I  need  to  suffer  for 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  69 

some  one!  I  need  to  use  this  surplus  energy  and 
sensibility  which  are  in  me.  I  need  to  nourish 
this  motherly  anxiety  which  is  wont  to  watch  over 
a  suffering  and  fatigued  creature.  Oh!  why 
could  I  not  live  between  you  two,  and  render 
you  happy  without  belonging  to  one  or  the 
other? "  She  would  like  to  make  the  acquaint- 
ance of  Musset's  future  mistress ;  she  would  per- 
chance teach  her  to  love  and  cherish  him.  But 
perhaps  that  mistress  will  be  jealous?  "  Ah!  at 
least  I  can  speak  of  you  at  any  moment  and  never 
see  a  brow  darkened,  never  hear  one  bitter  word. 
Your  memory  is  a  sacred  relic,  your  name  a  sol- 
emn word  which  I  pronounce  at  evening  in  the 
silence  of  the  lagoon." 

Pagello  writes  to  De  Musset  on  June  15th: 
"  Dear  Alfred,  we  have  not  yet  written  to  each 
other,  perhaps  because  neither  wished  to  begin. 
But  that  takes  naught  from  the  reciprocal  affec- 
tion which  will  always  bind  us  in  bonds  sublime, 
though  not  to  be  understood  by  other  men." 

Cries  of  love  were  the  answer  to  the  avowals 
of  the  faithless  one.  From  May  10th  Musset 
writes  that  he  is  lost,  that  all  is  crumbling  round 
him,  that  he  passes  hours  in  weeping,  kissing  her 
portrait,  and  addressing  mad  speeches  to  her. 
To  him  Paris  seems  a  frightful  desert ;  he  wishes 
to  leave  it,  and  flee  even  to  the  Orient.  He 
accuses  himself  of  having  misunderstood  her, 
loved  her  ill;  anew  he  drags  himself  in  the  mire, 


70  THE   LIFE   OF 

and  builds  an  altar  to  the  celestial  being,  the 
great  genius,  once  his  and  now  lost  through  his 
fault.  This  is  the  moment  when  his  soul,  all  in 
a  fever,  opens  itself  to  the  comprehension  of 
Rousseau :  "  I  am  reading  Werther  and  the  Nou- 
velle  Heloise.  I  am  devouring  all  those  sublime 
frenzies  which  I  used  to  ridicule  so  much.  I 
shall  perhaps  go  too  far  in  this  direction  as  in  the 
other.  What  do  I  care  for  that?  I  shall  keep 
on."  He  feels  an  imperious  and  terrible  need 
to  make  her  understand  that  she  is  happy.  This 
alone  soothes  his  grief. 

On  June  26th  she  writes  renouncing  her  in- 
tention to  bring  Pagello,  and  advises  Musset  to 
make  light  of  gossip.  "  What  might  harm  me, 
but  what  cannot  happen,  would  be  the  loss  of 
your  affection.  What  shall  console  me  for  all 
possible  ills  is  that.  Think,  my  child,  that  you 
are  in  my  life,  by  the  side  of  my  children,  and 
that  but  two  great  causes  exist  to  crush  me — 
their  death  or  your  indifference." 

Musset  writes  on  the  10th  of  July:  "  '  Tell  me, 
sir,  is  it  true  that  Madame  Sand  is  a  woman,  and 
an  "  adorable  one  "? '  Such  is  the  honest  ques- 
tion which  a  fair  and  silly  person  put  to  me  the 
other  day.  The  dear  creature  has  repeated  it  not 
less  than  three  times,  to  see  whether  I  would  vary 
my  answers.  '  Crow,  chanticleer ! '  I  said  quietly 
to  myself; '  you  will  not  deny  like  St.  Peter.' ' 

The  coming  of  Pagello  to  Paris  was  the  awk- 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  71 

ward  blunder  which  spoiled  everything.  Things 
there  are  which  in  a  gondola,  between  poets,  seem 
almost  natural,  and  which  will  not  bear  a  jour- 
ney. The  return  of  Musset,  alone  and  disabled, 
had  already  occasioned  spiteful  gossip,  which  he 
had  vainly  striven  to  check.  George  Sand  had 
failed  to  hush  her  friends  also.  She  kept  saying 
to  them:  "  This  is  the  only  passion  of  which  I  do 
not  repent."  But  people  were  sure  they  knew 
better  than  she,  quite  as  usual,  and  tongues 
wagged  at  the  same  rate  as  ever.  A  rumbling 
of  evil-speaking  rose  from  the  Boulevard  de 
Gand  and  from  the  Cafe  de  Paris.  It  rose  to  a 
clamor  on  the  entrance  of  the  accomplice — poor, 
innocent  fellow — in  the  overflow  of  romanticism 
inspired  by  the  Place  St.  Mark  and  the  feverish 
air  of  the  lagoons.  The  situation  appeared  in  all 
its  extravagance,  and  the  three  friends  were 
rudely  torn  from  their  dream  by  the  jeers  of  the 
idle  simpletons.  The  three  suffered  painful  an- 
noyance when  they  had  to  face  a  reality  which 
was  so  mean  and  almost  degrading. 

George  Sand  and  her  comrade  had  scarcely 
arrived — it  was  about  midnight — when  a  great 
agitation  seized  them  all.  With  Musset  it  was 
an  awakening  of  passion  to  which  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  irreparable  communicates  sadness 
without  bounds.  He  writes  to  George  Sand, 
that  in  daring  to  see  her  again  he  has  presumed 
too  far  on  his  strength,  and  that  he  is  lost.  The 


72  THE    LIFE    OF 

only  course  left  him  is  to  go  very  far  away.  Let 
her  have  no  fear.  In  him  exists  no  jealousy, 
conceit,  or  offended  pride.  There  is  nothing  but 
a  despairing  man  who  had  lost  the  only  love  of 
his  life,  and  who  is  bringing  away  with  him  bitter 
regret  at  having  lost  it  to  no  purpose,  because  it 
leaves  her  unhappy. 

She  in  fact  was  wasting  away  with  disappoint- 
ment. Pagello,  as  he  changed  atmosphere,  had 
opened  his  eyes  to  the  ridiculous  side  of  the  situ- 
ation. "  From  the  moment  when  he  set  foot  on 
French  soil,"  wrote  George  Sand,  "he  ceased 
to  comprehend  things."  Instead  of  that  sacred 
enthusiasm  of  yore,  he  felt  nothing  but  irritation 
when  his  two  friends  called  him  as  a  witness  to 
the  chastity  of  their  kisses:  "  Look  at  him;  he  is 
becoming  a  weakling  once  more — suspicious,  un- 
fair, quarreling  about  nothing,  and  dropping  on 
your  head  all-smashing  stones."  In  his  anxiety 
he  opens  letters,  blabs  and  scolds  without  discre- 
tion. George  Sand  contemplated  with  horror  the 
shipwreck  of  her  illusions.  She  had  assumed 
that  the  world  would  understand  that  their  his- 
tory was  not  to  judge  by  the  rules  of  vulgar 
morality.  But  the  world  cannot  admit  that  there 
are  privileged  characters,  or,  to  speak  with  more 
exactness,  people  dispensed  in  morals.  She  read 
condemnation  on  all  countenances,  and  for 
whom,  great  heavens!  For  this  insignificant 
Italian,  of  whom  she  now  was  ashamed. 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  73 

Six  months  ago  they  were  all  in  a  false  posi- 
tion, laboring  to  deceive  themselves  and  to  trans- 
figure a  commonplace  adventure.  They  were 
destined  to  pay  a  dear  price  for  their  misdeeds. 

George  Sand  consented  to  a  last  adieu  to  her 
friend;  not  without  difficulty,  for  an  instinct 
warned  her  that  it  would  all  be  worthless.  Next 
day  Musset  wrote  to  her:  "  I  send  this  last  fare- 
well, my  well  beloved,  and  I  send  it  with  con- 
fidence, not  without  pain,  but  without  despair. 
Cruel  anguish,  keen  struggles,  bitter  tears  have 
given  place  in  me  to  a  very  dear  companion — 
pale  and  sweet  melancholy.  This  morning,  after 
a  tranquil  night,  I  found  her  by  the  head  of  my 
bed,  with  a  gentle  smile  upon  her  lips.  This  is 
the  friend  who  is  going  with  me.  She  bears  on 
her  brow  your  last  kiss.  Why  should  I  fear  to 
say  so  to  you?  Was  it  not  as  chaste,  as  pure 
as  your  lovely  soul?  O  my  well  beloved,  you 
will  never  reproach  me  with  those  two  hours — 
hours  so  sad — which  we  spent!  You  will  treas- 
ure their  memory.  They  poured  a  healing  balm 
upon  my  wound ;  you  will  not  repent  having  left 
your  poor  friend  a  keepsake  which  he  will  ever 
bear,  and  which  all  sorrows,  all  joys  in  the  future 
will  find  like  a  talisman  upon  his  heart  between 
the  world  and  him.  Our  friendship  is  conse- 
crated, my  child.  Yesterday  it  received  before 
God  the  holy  baptism  of  our  tears.  It  is  as  in- 
vulnerable as  baptism.  I  fear  nothing,  I  hope 


74  THE   LIFE   OF 

for  nothing.  I  am  done  on  this  earth.  It  was 
not  reserved  for  me  to  have  a  greater  pleasure." 

Next  he  begs  leave  to  continue  writing  to  her ; 
he  will  bear  anything  without  complaint  provided 
he  knows  that  she  is  content:  "  Be  happy;  have 
courage,  patience,  pity ;  try  to  vanquish  that  well- 
grounded  pride ;  narrow  your  heart,  big  George, 
yours  is  too  great  for  a  human  breast.  But  if 
you  make  renunciation  of  life,  if  you  ever  find 
yourself  alone  in  the  face  of  misfortune,  recall 
the  oath  which  you  swore,  do  not  die  without  me. 
Remember  that  you  promised  before  God.  But 
I  shall  not  die  without  having  written  a  book 
upon  myself — upon  you,  above  all.  No,  my  fair 
betrothed;  you  shall  not  lie  down  in  this  chill 
earth  without  its  knowing  it  has  borne  you.  No, 
no;  I  swear  it  by  my  genius  and  by  my  youth, 
on  your  tomb  shall  spring  only  lilies  without 
stain.  With  these  hands  I  will  set  your  epitaph 
in  marble  purer  than  the  images  of  our  glories 
of  bygone  days.  Posterity  shall  repeat  our 
names  as  those  of  the  immortal  lovers  who  have 
but  one  to  them  both,  such  as  Romeo  and  Juliet, 
such  as  Heloise  and  Abelard.  Men  shall  never 
speak  of  one  without  the  other.  I  will  finish  your 
history  with  a  hymn  of  love." 

The  calmness  of  this  letter  was  deceitful.  He 
set  out  for  Baden  toward  August  25th,  stopped 
at  Strasburg  on  the  28th,  and  immediately  came 
explosions  of  passion,  burning  and  insensate  let- 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  75 

ters.  He  writes  from  Baden,  September  1, 1834 : 
"  Never  did  man  love  as  I  love  you.  I  am  lost; 
behold!  I  am  drowned,  overwhelmed  with  love." 
He  no  longer  knows  whether  he  lives,  eats,  walks, 
breathes,  or  speaks ;  he  only  knows  that  he  loves, 
that  he  can  do  no  more,  that  he  is  dying,  and 
that  it  is  frightful  to  die  of  love,  to  feel  one's 
heart  shrink  and  shrink  till  it  ceases  to  beat,  one's 
eyes  grow  dim,  and  knees  quake.  He  can  neither 
hold  his  peace  nor  say  aught  else :  "  I  love  you, 
my  flesh  and  my  bones  and  my  blood.  Of  love 
I  am  dying,  and  of  a  love  endless,  nameless,  in- 
sensate, desperate,  beyond  redemption.  You  are 
loved,  adored,  idolized  to  death.  No ;  I  shall  not 
get  well,  I  shall  not  attempt  to  live,  and  I  prefer 
it  so;  and  to  die  loving  you  is  worth  more  than 
to  live.  I  am,  indeed,  concerned  at  what  people 
say.  They  will  say  that  you  have  another  lover, 
I  know.  I  am  dying  with  it,  but  I  love — I  love. 
Let  them  stop  me  from  loving ! "  Why  sepa- 
rate? What  is  there  between  us?  Phrases,  phan- 
toms of  duty.  Let  her  come  for  him  or  let  her 
tell  him  to  come.  But  no;  always  these  phrases, 
these  pretended  duties.  And  she  is  allowing  him 
to  die  of  the  thirst  she  has  for  him! 

A  little  farther  down  in  the  same  letter  a  re- 
flection, very  wise,  but  belated:  "  We  ought  not 
to  see  each  other  again.  Now  all  is  finished.  To 
myself  I  said  that  I  ought  to  find  another  love, 
forget  yours,  have  courage.  I  essayed ;  I  endeav- 


76  THE   LIFE   OF 

ored,  at  the  least."  It  is  impossible  at  the  present 
moment,  now  that  he  has  seen  her  again ;  he  pre- 
fers suffering  to  life. 

Just  as  he  is  retiring  far  from  Paris,  George 
Sand  flees  to  Nohant,  as  if  maddened.  The  let- 
ters which  she  sends  to  friends  are  the  plaintive 
cries  of  a  wounded  animal.  She  writes  to  Gus- 
tave  Papet:  "  Come  to  see  me;  I  am  in  frightful 
pain.  Come  and  give  me  an  eloquent  grasp  of 
your  hand,  my  poor  friend.  If  I  can  recover, 
I  will  pay  all  my  debts  to  friendship ;  for  I  have 
neglected  it,  and  it  has  not  forsaken  me."  To 
Boucoiran  she  says:  "  Nohant,  August  10. — All 
my  friends  have  come.  I  experienced  great 
pleasure  in  being  there  again.  It  was  a  farewell 
which  I  came  to  say  to  my  home  and  to  all  the 
memories  of  my  youth  and  childhood,  for  you 
must  have  understood  and  divined  this:  that  my 
life  is  hateful,  ruined,  impossible,  and  I  wish  to 
have  done  with  it  forthwith.  I  shall  have  to  talk 
fully  with  you,  and  to  charge  you  with  the  exe- 
cution of  sacred  purposes.  Don't  lecture  me  be- 
forehand. When  we  have  spoken  for  an  hour 
together,  when  I  have  made  you  see  the  state 
of  my  brain  and  my  heart,  you  will  say  with  me 
that  it  is  weak  cowardice  to  try  to  live,  so  long 
has  it  been  my  duty  to  have  done  with  exist- 
ence." 

And  Pagello?  They  had  left  him  all  alone  in 
Paris,  and  he  was  in  a  very  bad  temper.  He 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  77 

thought  it  very  wrong  that  they  should  have 
brought  him  two  hundred  and  fifty  leagues  to 
make  him  play  such  a  silly  part. 

George  Sand  writes  to  Musset  in  pencil,  and 
without  dating — in  a  word,  paper  on  her  knees: 
"Alas!  what  means  all  that?  Why  forget  at 
every  moment,  and  this  time  more  than  ever,  that 
this  feeling  ought  to  transform  itself  and  no 
longer  have  the  power,  of  its  own  nature,  to  give 
umbrage  to  man  or  woman.  Ah!  you  still  love 
me  too  well;  we  must  never  meet  again.  What 
you  express  is  passion,  but  no  longer  the  sacred 
enthusiasm  of  better  moments,  no  longer  that 
uncontaminated  friendship  of  which  I  hoped  to 
see  those  excessive  expressions  die  away  little  by 
little."  She  reveals  to  him  the  painful  condition 
of  relations  with  Pagello :  "  Everything  from  me 
wounds  and  irritates  him,  and — must  I  tell  you? 
— he  is  going,  perhaps  already  gone;  and  as  for 
me,  I  shall  not  hold  him  back;  he  has  no  more 
faith,  consequently  no  more  affection.  If  he  is 
still  hi  Paris,  I  shall  see  him,  as  I  am  going  to 
return  to  console  him;  justify  myself,  no;  detain 
him,  no.  And  yet  I  loved  him,  heartily  and  ear- 
nestly, this  generous  fellow,  who  is  as  roman- 
esque  as  I  am — stronger,  I  thought,  than  I." 

All  through  the  month  of  September  they  con- 
tinued devouring  their  hearts  in  reciprocal  tor- 
ture. Neither  had  strength  enough  to  break 
loose.  October  brought  them  together,  and  they 


78  THE   LIFE    OF 

resumed  the  endeavor  to  believe,  the  struggle  to 
put  faith  in  each  other  and  in  the  cleansing  virtue 
of  love.  Days  wore  away  in  harassing  alterna- 
tives. Musset,  having  kept  fewer  illusions  of  the 
past  than  George  Sand,  felt  a  nausea  rise  to  his 
lips  amid  protesting  oaths  of  love.  His  disgust 
would  turn  to  wrath,  and  he  would  overwhelm 
his  friend  with  insults.  Hardly  had  he  left  her 
when  reality  faded  away  before  his  eyes,  and  he 
beheld  nothing  but  the  chimera  which  their  in- 
flamed imaginations  had  bred.  He  got  pardon 
and  grace  by  dint  of  eloquence  and  despair,  and 
both  began  anew  to  roll  their  stone,  which  again 
tumbled  back  upon  their  heads.  Musset,  on  the 
13th  of  October,  1834,  thanks  George  Sand,  in 
a  gentle,  sad  letter,  for  consenting  to  see  him 
again.  On  the  28th,  Pagello,  a  man  not  made 
for  tragedies  and  beginning  now  to  be  fright- 
ened, without  knowing  why,  announces  his  de- 
parture to  Alfred  Tattet,  conjuring  him  never 
to  say  one  word  about  these  amours  with 
George.  "  I  don't  want,"  he  adds,  "  any  ven- 
dette"  George  Sand  writes,  without  dating,  to 
Musset :  "  I  was  sure  that  the  reproaches  would 
come  on  the  morrow  of  the  happiness  dreamed 
of  and  promised,  and  you  would  make  a  crime 
of  what  you  had  accepted  as  a  right.  Have  we 
already  come  to  that — my  God!  Well,  we  must 
go  no  farther;  let  me  depart.  Yesterday  I  de- 
sired to  go;  it  is  a  farewell  forever  settled  in  my 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  79 

mind.  Recall  your  despair  and  all  you  said  to 
make  me  believe  myself  necessary  to  you,  believe 
that  without  me  you  were  a  lost  man.  And  once 
again,  I  have  been  mad  enough  to  want  to  save 
you.  But  you  are  lost  more  than  of  old,  since 
hardly  were  you  contented  when  you  turned  your 
despair  and  anger  on  me.  What  can  I  do,  good 
heavens?  What  are  you  asking  now?  What  are 
you  demanding  of  me?  Questions,  suspicions, 
recriminations  already!"  She  reminds  him  of 
the  harm  done  her  in  Venice,  the  offensive  or  dis- 
tressing things  which  he  had  said,  and  for  the 
first  time  her  language  is  bitter.  She  had  fore- 
seen what  is  at  hand.  '  That  past  which  exalted 
you  like  a  beautiful  poem  as  long  as  I  refused 
myself,  and  which  seems  to  you  no  more  than 
a  nightmare  now  that  you  again  seize  upon  me 
like  your  prey."  That  past  was  infallibly  to 
make  him  suffer.  Separation  was  an  absolute 
necessity.  They  would  both  alike  be  too  un- 
happy. "  What  have  we  left  of  a  bond  that 
seemed  so  fair  to  both?  Neither  love  nor  friend- 
ship— mon  Dieu! " 

A  letter  which  seems  to  have  crossed  the  above, 
betrays  a  still  greater  anguish.  He  is  in  conster- 
nation over  what  he  has  done.  He  understands 
nothing;  it  is  the  onset  of  madness.  Hardly  had 
he  gone  three  paces  in  the  street  when  reason 
came  back,  and  he  nearly  fell  when  he  recalled 
the  memory  of  his  ingratitude  and  of  his  stupid 


80  THE    LIFE    OF 

brutality.  He  deserves  no  forgiveness,  but  so 
unhappy  is  he  that  she  will  pity  him.  She  shall 
impose  a  penance  and  leave  him  hope,  for,  in 
truth,  his  reason  would  not  resist  the  thought  of 
losing  her.  Once  more  he  paints  his  love  with  a 
passionate  ardor  which  makes  these  letters  the 
Nights  in  prose. 

She  relents  and  forgives.  Musset  is  intoxi- 
cated with  bliss.  They  meet,  and  George  Sand 
takes  up  her  pen  in  discouragement:  "  Why  were 
we  so  sad  at  our  separation?  Shall  we  meet 
again  to-night?  Can  we  love?  You  said  yes, 
and  I  strive  to  believe  it.  But  it  seems  to  me 
that  there  is  no  coherence  in  your  ideas,  and  that 
at  the  slightest  trouble  you  rise  in  indignation 
against  me  as  against  a  yoke.  Alas!  my  child, 
we  love — here  you  see  the  only  certain  thing  be- 
tween us.  Time  and  absence  have  not  prevented, 
and  will  not  prevent,  us  from  loving  each  other. 
But  is  our  life  possible  together?  "  She  proposes 
that  they  separate  for  good  and  all ;  that  in  every 
way  would  be  wiser.  "  I  feel  that  I  shall  love 
you  again  as  before,  if  I  do  not  run  away.  Per- 
haps I  may  kill  you  and  myself  too.  Think  of 
this.  I  wished  to  tell  you  beforehand  all  there 
was  to  fear  between  us.  I  ought  to  have  written 
and  not  come  back.  Fatality  brings  me  here 
again.  Must  we  bless  or  accuse  it?  There  are 
hours,  I  avow,  when  terror  is  stronger  than  love." 

Musset  was  the  first  to  tire.    The  rupture  came 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  81 

from  him.  On  the  12th  of  October  he  announces 
it  to  Alfred  Tattet.  Sainte-Beuve,  then  George 
Sand's  confidant,  was  officially  informed  also. 
Everything  ought  to  have  been  over  and  done 
with,  and  yet  past  tempests  are  nothing  less  than 
naught  compared  to  those  now  brewing.  It 
might  be  said  that  one  of  those  pitiless  punish- 
ments, wherein  the  ancients  recognized  the  hand 
of  the  divinity,  had  come,  so  that  now  we  feel 
only  compassion  for  the  wretches  who  writhe  in 
anguish  with  cries  of  pain. 

George  Sand  had  gone  home  to  Nbhant,  and 
at  the  very  first  had  felt  a  sense  of  deliverance 
and  of  repose:  "  I  am  pretty  well,  diverting  my- 
self, and  I  shall  come  up  to  Paris  only  when 
cured  and  strengthened.  I  read  your  note  to 
Duteil.  You  are  wrong  in  speaking  so  of  Alf . 
Don't  say  anything  about  him,  as  you  love  him, 
and  be  assured  that  between  him  and  me  all  is 
over." 

This  was,  however,  nothing  but  a  calm.  The 
tone  of  her  letters  changes  very  soon.  On  the 
25th  of  December,  1834,  she  writes  from  Paris 
to  Musset :  "  But  still  I  am  not  getting  well.  I 
am  giving  over  to  my  despair.  It  is  gnawing, 
crushing  me.  Alas!  Every  day  it  grows  like 
this  dreadful  isolation,  these  struggles  of  my 
heart,  to  rejoin  the  heart  once  open  to  me!  And 
if  I  ran,  when  love  seizes  me  with  too  great  a 
force?  If  I  were  to  go  and  break  the  bell-cord, 


82  THE   LIFE    OF 

to  make  him  open  his  door  to  me?  If  I  lay  down 
by  the  threshold  until  he  passed?  If  I  flung 
myself,  not  at  his  feet — mere  madness,  after  all, 
for  that  would  be  an  entreaty,  and  surely  he  is 
doing  all  he  can  for  me;  it  is  cruel  to  beset  him 
and  demand  the  impossible — but  if  I  flung  my- 
self on  his  neck,  into  his  arms,  and  said,  '  You 
love  me  still,  you  are  suffering,  blushing,  but  you 
pity  me  too  much  not  to  love  me '  ?  Whensoever 
you  feel  your  tenderness  growing  weary  and 
your  irritation  coming  back,  drive  me  away,  mal- 
treat me,  but  never  be  it  with  those  frightful 
words — the  last  time!  I  shall  suffer  as  much  as 
you  desire,  but  permit  me  sometimes,  were  it  but 
once  in  the  week,  to  come  asking  for  one  tear, 
one  kiss,  to  give  me  life  and  courage.  But  you 
cannot.  Ah!  you  are  sick  of  me,  and  you  have 
been  cured  of  it  very  quickly  too.  Alas!  I  was 
certainly  more  guilty  than  you  at  Venice." 

Her  turn  to  accuse  herself,  and  to  implore  for- 
giveness. Her  pride  is  crushed.  She  takes  a 
bitter  pleasure  in  humbly  eating  her  own  words 
and  justifying  the  worst  insults  from  Musset. 
But  has  the  lesson  not  been  hard  enough?  "  Fri- 
day.— In  vain  I  call  anger  to  help  me.  I  love; 
I  shall  die  of  it,  or  God  will  work  a  miracle  for 
me.  He  will  give  me  literary  ambition  or  spir- 
itual devotion.  Midnight;  I  cannot  work.  Iso- 
lation, solitude!  I  can  neither  write  nor  pray — 
would  I  could  die;  who  shall  hinder  me?  O  my 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  83 

poor  children,  how  unhappy  your  mother  is ! " 
"  Saturday,  midnight. — Maniac,  you  forsake  me 
at  the  fairest  hour  of  my  life,  on  my  love's  truest, 
most  passionate  day,  when  my  heart  is  bleeding 
the  most  violently!  Is  it  naught  to  have  tamed 
a  woman's  pride  and  to  have  flung  her  at  your 
feet,  naught  to  know  that  she  is  dying  of  it? 
Torment  of  my  life!  Deadly  love!  I  would 
give  all  that  I  have  lived  for  a  single  day  of  your 
flood-tide.  But  never!  It  is  too  frightful,  atro- 
cious! I  cannot  believe  that,  and  I  am  going 
there,  I  am.  No!  Shriek  or  howl — but  I  must 
not  go;  Sainte-Beuve  forbids!  " 

Exaltation  soars  to  delirium.  The  famous 
letters  of  the  Portuguese  Nun  are  lukewarm  and 
tame  beside  some  of  these  pages,  which  may  be 
accounted  among  the  most  fiery  that  love  has 
ever  extorted  from  a  woman.  She  wallows  at 
his  feet,  begging  him  to  kick  her — in  lack  of  a 
better  gift:  "I  would  rather  have  a  blow  than 
nothing  " — and  jumbling  up  her  supplications 
with  reproaches  addressed  to  God  for  abandon- 
ing her  at  this  crisis,  she  offers  a  bargain  to  the 
Most  High:  "Ah!  restore  my  lover  to  me,  and 
I  will  be  a  devout  and  godly  woman,  and  my 
knees  shall  wear  away  the  churches'  pavement- 
stones." 

And  this  was  not  all  mere  words:  she  cut  her 
magnificent  hair,  and  sent  it  to  Musset.  She 
came  to  his  house,  and  wept  at  the  door  or  on 


84  THE    LIFE    OF 

the  stairway.  She  roamed  about  like  a  soul 
in  torments,  her  eyes  ringed,  despair  on  her 
face. 

Musset  loved  her  still.  He  could  not  resist. 
George  Sand,  on  January  14,  1835,  writes  to 
Tattet:  "Alfred  is  my  lover  once  more." 

The  weeks  which  followed  were  frightful,  and 
we  shall  not  trouble  the  reader  with  the  painful 
and  monotonous  story.  Well  may  any  one  be 
astonished  that  they  were  able  to  stand  fast,  and 
not  go  stark  mad.  They  obstinately  persisted  in 
this  refusal  to  accept  the  past — their  impure  and 
ineffaceable  past — in  chasing  the  specter  of  a 
sublime  and  consecrated  affection.  More  than 
ever,  memories  and  suspicions  poisoned  each  of 
their  joys,  and  hideous  quarrels  crowned  their 
spells  of  intoxication. 

At  last,  one  day  George  Sand  declares  that 
she  can  go  no  farther,  and  is  utterly  unfit  to 
bring  him  happiness.  "  My  God !  "  she  contin- 
ues, "  I  am  reproaching  you  who  are  suffering 
so  much  yourself.  Forgive,  my  angel,  my  dar- 
ling, my  unfortunate !  I  am  suffering  so  myself. 
.  .  .  You,  you  want  to  whip  and  spur  your 
pain.  Haven't  you  enough  as  it  is?  I  don't 
think  that  there  can  exist  anything  worse  than 
what  I  feel  and  undergo.  Farewell!  I  would 
not  leave,  would  not  take  you  back.  I  love  no 
more — I  adore!  Stay,  go,  only  say  not  that  I 
suffer  not.  That  would  make  me  suffer  more. 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  85 

My  only  love,  my  life,  my  heart's  core,  my  blood 
depart;  but,  as  you  depart,  slay  me."  Musset 
also  could  go  no  farther.  He  had  written  her  that 
he  was  packing.  As  he  could  not  make  up  his 
mind  to  depart,  and  as  the  love  and  wrath  storm 
was  furious  as  ever;  as,  furthermore,  a  woman 
who  has  been  forsaken  is  inclined  to  make  the 
first  move  and  get  the  start,  in  order  not  to  be 
deserted  a  second  time — George  Sand  plotted  a 
sort  of  jail-breaking  for  the  7th  of  March,  1835, 
and  sought  refuge  at  Nohant. 

On  the  14th  she  writes  to  Boucoiran:  "My 
friend,  you  are  wrong  in  talking  to  me  of  Alf . 
This  is  no  time  to  say  a  word  against  him.  De- 
spising is  much  worse  than  regretting.  Any- 
how, neither  shall  ever  overtake  me.  I  cannot 
regret  the  stormy  life  which  I  am  leaving,  I  can- 
not despise  a  man  whom,  in  all  that  concerns 
honor,  I  know  so  well.  I  asked  you  this  only, 
to  speak  of  his  health,  and  the  eff ect  my  depar- 
ture has  on  him.  You  inform  me  that  he  is  well, 
and  betrays  no  mortification — all  I  desire  to 
learn,  and  the  happiest  news  I  could  hear.  My 
desire  was  to  leave,  and  not  cause  him  suffering. 
If  I  have  succeeded,  God  be  praised ! " 

At  first  the  two  were  relieved,  as  we  may  well 
conceive.  George  Sand  had  a  liver  complaint, 
and  after  that  crisis  she  very  soon  reached  the 
point  of  indifference.  Likewise  Musset  believed 
himself  cured,  but  he  was  mistaken.  Something 


86  THE   LIFE   OE 

in  him  had  broken  down,  leaving  an  incurable 
sore. 

On  neither  side — this  remark  is  essential  to  the 
appreciation  of  their  characters — on  neither  side 
is  there  any  trace,  at  the  earliest  rupture,  of  the 
abyss  of  rancor  and  animosity  which  the  ill- 
service  of  their  intimates  was  to  dig  between 
them,  and  at  their  expense.  At  long  intervals 
they  wrote  to  each  other,  for  some  piece  of  in- 
formation, to  recommend  some  person,  and  they 
persevered  in  protecting  each  other  from  evil 
tongues.  The  Confession,  in  which  Musset  raises 
an  altar  to  his  friend,  came  forth  in  1836,  and 
George  Sand  at  that  time  wrote:  "For  you  I 
do  not  cease  to  feel,  I  confess,  all  a  mother's 
tenderness,  and  at  the  bottom  of  my  heart.  Im- 
possible for  me  to  hear  any  one  speak  ill  of  you 
except  with  anger."  Two  years  later  the  Nuits 
came  out.  Friends  did  not  desist  from  kindling 
resentment  in  them.  We  feel  that  hostilities  are 
near.  On  the  19th  of  April,  1838,  George  Sand 
writes  to  Musset:  "  I  did  not  exactly  understand 
the  remainder  of  your  letter.  I  do  not  under- 
stand why  you  ask  whether  we  are  friends  or 
enemies.  It  seems  that  you  came  to  see  me  last 
winter,  and  that  we  had  six  hours  of  fraternal 
intimacy,  after  which  it  would  never  be  right  to 
doubt  each  other,  were  ten  years  to  come  and 
go  without  our  seeing  each  other  or  writing,  un- 
less we  consented  to  doubt  our  own  sincerity; 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  87 

and,  in  truth,  it  is  beyond  me  to  imagine  how 
and  why  we  should  be  deceiving  each  other  now." 
In  1840  they  exchange  a  few  letters,  to  decide 
what  to  do  with  their  correspondence.  Their  last 
meeting  came  to  pass  in  1848. 

The  conclusion  of  their  story  we  borrow  from 
George  Sand.  "  Peace  and  pardon,"  said  she,  in 
her  old  age,  to  Sainte-Beuve,  one  day  when  they 
had  been  stirring  the  ashes  of  that  terrible  past. 
So  be  it!  Peace  and  pardon  to  those  wretched 
victims  of  romantic  love — not  at  all,  as  George 
Sand  would  have  it,  because  they  had  loved  much, 
but  because  they  had  suffered  much. 


CHAPTER   V 

THE  NIGHTS 

LIFE  resumed  its  wonted  course.  In  a  frag- 
ment written  in  1839,  Musset  says:  "  At  first  I 
believed  that  I  should  not  feel  regret  or  pain  at 
my  abandonment.  I  withdrew  with  pride,  but 
hardly  had  I  looked  around  me  when  I  beheld 
a  desert.  I  was  attacked  with  an  unexpected 
suffering.  It  seemed  to  me  that  all  my  thoughts 
were  falling  like  dry  leaves,  when  some  unknown 
feeling  of  dreadful  sadness  and  tenderness  rose 
in  my  soul.  The  moment  I  saw  that  I  could  not 
struggle,  I  gave  way  to  grief  in  utter  despera- 
tion." Little  by  little  his  tears  dried.  "  Tran- 
quil now,  I  cast  my  eyes  on  what  I  have  left. 
With  the  first  book  that  came  under  my  hand 
I  perceived  that  all  had  changed.  Nothing  of 
the  past  continued  to  exist,  or,  at  least,  nothing 
had  the  same  look.  An  old  picture,  a  tragedy 
which  I  knew  by  heart,  a  romance  sung  an  hun- 
dred times,  a  chat  with  a  friend,  surprised  me; 
I  could  not  recognize  the  usual  meaning." 

Familiar  objects  round  him  shocked  him.  His 
library — that  of  a  young  man — vexed  him.  "  I 
began,  like  Cervantes'  cure,  by  purging  my  li- 

88 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  89 

brary,  and  putting  my  idols  in  the  garret.  I 
had  in  my  room  a  number  of  lithographs,  the 
best  of  which  seemed  hideous.  I  did  not  go  so 
far  as  up-stairs  to  rid  myself  of  them,  and  was 
content  with  throwing  them  into  the  fire.  My 
sacrifice  ended,  I  took  count  of  the  remainder. 
The  account  was  not  long,  but  the  few  I  had 
kept  inspired  me  with  a  kind  of  respect.  My 
library,  in  its  emptiness,  distressed  me;  I  pur- 
chased another — about  three  feet  wide,  and  of 
but  three  shelves.  There  I  arrayed,  slowly  and 
after  due  reflection,  a  small  number  of  volumes ; 
as  for  my  frames,  they  remained  unoccupied  for 
a  long  time.  Only  at  the  end  of  six  months  did 
I  manage  to  fill  them  to  my  taste;  I  put  in  only 
engravings  after  Raphael  and  Michael  Angelo." 

The  engravings  were  Madonnas,  sacred  sub- 
jects, and  a  battle  piece.  The  list  of  the  books 
admitted  is  interesting:  It  was  Sophocles,  Am- 
yot's  Plutarch,  Aristophanes,  and  Horace; 
Rabelais,  Montaigne,  Regnier,  the  seventeenth- 
century  classics,  and  Andre  Chenier,  Shake- 
speare, Goethe,  Byron,  Boccaccio,  and  the  four 
great  Italian  poets.  Not  one  writer  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  save  Chenier;  Voltaire  or  Rous- 
seau no  more  than  Crebillon  the  younger  and 
Duclos. 

That  done,  he  resumed  his  pen.  He  had  writ- 
ten almost  no  verse  since  Rolla,  published  Au- 
gust 15,  1833,  at  the  outset  of  his  liaison  with 


90  THE    LIFE   OF 

George  Sand,  and  of  which  we  could  not  speak 
farther  lest  we  broke  the  narrative  of  the  drama. 
We  must  then  turn  back  an  instant,  for  Rolla 
cannot  be  passed  over  in  silence.  No  other  poem 
has  done  more  to  win  over  the  young  to  Musset. 
The  very  faults  which  could  be  picked  out  did 
him  no  harm;  for  example,  that  declamatory  ac- 
cent in  certain  passages,  since  youth  is  by  nature 
declamatory,  and  sincerely  so.  As  Sainte-Beuve 
tells  us,  law  students,  medical  students  had  the 
poem  by  heart.  When  it  had  been  printed  in 
the  review  only,  they  would  declaim  it  for  the 
benefit  of  newcomers.  And  since  then  the  genu- 
ine admirers  of  Musset  have  always  felt  a  par- 
ticular tenderness  for  Rolla.  Taine  speaks  of  it 
as  "  the  most  passionate  of  poems,"  wherein  a 
"  bruised  heart "  has  gathered  up  "  all  the  mag- 
nificences of  nature  and  of  history,  and  made  a 
flashing  sheaf  of  them,  glistening  with  the  most 
burning  sun  of  poetry  which  ever  flamed.'* 

From  such  eloquence,  and  emotion  so  strong, 
we  might  divine  that  a  moral  crisis  was  at  hand, 
and  that  passion  was  in  quest  of  the  author  of 
the  Andalusian.  With  what  suddenness  the 
crisis  came,  with  what  unsparing  violence  pas- 
sion descended  upon  him,  we  have  already  be- 
held. He  wrote  no  more  for  two  years — in  verse, 
at  all  events. 

During  this  protracted  silence,  poet  and  man 
underwent  transformation.  The  man,  ripened 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  91 

by  suffering,  had  almost  nothing  left  of  the  fair 
youth  who  had  charmed  and  bewitched  the  poets 
of  the  Cenacle,  nothing  of  the  boyish  and  radiant 
appearance  of  which  Sainte-Beuve  has  preserved 
the  spirited  and  dazzling  memory.  "It  is  twen- 
ty-nine years  since  then,"  wrote  Sainte-Beuve  in 
1857,  on  the  morrow  of  Musset's  death.  "  I  still 
see  him  on  his  entrance  into  the  literary  world, 
at  first  into  the  familiar  circle  of  Victor  Hugo, 
next  into  that  of  Alfred  de  Vigny  and  of  Des- 
champs.  What  a  debut!  What  easy  grace! 
And,  from  the  first  lines  he  repeated,  what  sur- 
prise and  rapture  he  excited  round  him !  It  was 
spring  itself — a  whole  springtime  of  poesy 
bursting  forth  to  our  sight.  He  was  not  yet 
eighteen:  a  lofty,  masculine  forehead,  cheeks  in 
bloom  which  had  not  lost  the  roses  of  childhood, 
nostrils  swelling  with  the  breath  of  desire,  he 
came  on,  with  ringing  tread  and  uplifted  eye, 
as  one  sure  of  victory  and  overwhelming  with  the 
pride  of  life.  No  one,  at  the  first  view,  could 
better  give  the  idea  of  adolescent  genius." 

To  the  triumphant  youth,  so  marvelously 
brought  before  us  by  Sainte-Beuve,  had  suc- 
ceeded a  cold  and  haughty  man,  who  would  know 
no  surrender  of  himself  except  with  knowledge 
and  reflection.  The  devoted  friend  whom  he 
styled  his  marraine,  or  sponsor,  vainly  re- 
proached him  for  his  unsociable  and  disdainful 
airs.  He  made  acknowledgment  with  cheerful 


92  THE   LIFE   OF 

alacrity,  as  he  always  did,  of  anything  wrong 
found  in  him  or  his  works.  "  Everybody  agrees 
on  the  disagreeable  defects  in  my  bearing  in  the 
salon.  Not  only  do  I  agree  with  everybody,  but 
the  disagreeable  is  more  so  to  me  than  to  any- 
body else.  Whence  comes  it?  From  two  first 
causes:  pride  and  shyness.  We  can't  change 
nature;  we  must  arbitrate,  compromise."  He 
promised  his  godmother  to  take  it  upon  himself 
to  cultivate  politeness,  but  he  guarded  against 
a  surrender  of  the  smallest  particle  of  his  heart, 
whether  it  were  to  friendship  or  to  the  light  and 
fleeting  sympathies,  even,  which  form  the  ordi- 
nary attraction  of  social  intercourse.  Was  it 
mere  sterility  of  soul?  Was  it  an  apprehension 
of  what  it  might  cost,  and  intuitive  dread  of 
pain?  "  I  looked  at  myself,  querying  whether 
beneath  this  surly,  stiff,  and  impertinent  outside, 
which  excites  little  affection,  whatever  the  pretty 
little  Milanese  may  say — whether  under  it  all 
there  were  not  primitively  something  passionate 
and  exalted,  after  the  style  of  Rousseau."  That 
is  not  doubtful,  for  there  was  a  little  of  Saint- 
Preux  in  his  composition,  and  without  it  we 
should  never  have  had  the  Nights,  which  assur- 
edly were  not  written  by  Mardoche  or  Octave. 

Save  two  pieces  of  secondary  value,  the  first 
verse  after  his  return  from  Italy  was  the  May 
Night — June  15, 1835,  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes. 
The  three  other  Nights,  the  Letter  to  Lamartine, 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  93 

the  Stanzas  to  Malibran,  succeeded  at  brief  in- 
tervals. In  1838  the  Hope  in  God  closes  the 
series.  The  great  poet  will  awake  again,  but  not 
till  three  years  after,  to  write  his  admirable 
Souvenir.  By  1838  the  best  of  his  novels  and 
the  masterworks  for  the  theater  were  already 
done.  He  was  then  twenty-seven.  After  the 
promise  of  an  unrivaled  springtime,  after  the 
efflorescence  of  too  brief  a  summer,  Alfred  de 
Musset  had  no  autumn,  no  winter.  His  entire 
work  is  confined  to  a  space  of  ten  years,  three 
or  four  of  which  were  devoted  to  reflecting,  hesi- 
tating, loving,  and  recovery. 

In  the  poetry  of  this  second  period,  Musset  is 
no  longer  a  romantic,  form  only  being  consid- 
ered. Not  contented  with  abandoning  the  con- 
quests of  the  Cenacle,  he  turns  against  his  former 
allies.  He  is  aggressive,  waggish;  he  writes  the 
famous  letter  of  Dupuis  and  Cotonet  on  the 
Abuse  of  Adjectives  (Revue  des  Deux  Mondes, 
1836) ,  in  which  a  pair  of  plain  citizens  of  Ferte- 
sous-Jouarre,  after  trying  to  comprehend  what 
this  romanticism  might  be,  discover  it  to  be  a  kind 
of  fool-trap,  a  patchwork  of  brand-new  and 
second-hand  from  Shakespeare,  Byron,  Aris- 
tophanes, the  Gospels,  and  the  Spaniards — all 
so  adroitly  glued  and  regilt  that  quidnuncs  stand 
agape  before  the  display  without  noticing  that 
labels  have  no  sense,  and  that  no  man  ever  knew 
or  will  know  what  in  the  world  social  art  or  hu- 


94  THE   LIFE   OF 

manitarian  art  may  be.  Musset  even  rejects  the 
romantic  claim  to  the  invention  of  the  broken 
line,  and  he  adds,  ingrate  as  he  is,  "  It  is,  more- 
over, horrible;  and  more  still?  it  is  impious;  it  is 
a  sacrilege  in  the  sight  of  the  gods,  to  the  Muses 
an  offense."  He  leaves  them  in  all  and  for  all, 
as  their  "  discoveries  "  and  "  treasure-trove,"  the 
glory  of  saying  stupefie  for  stupefait,  or  blan- 
dices  for  flatteries,  and  even  that  with  a  very 
bad  grace,  as  if  he  begrudged  it.  Had  he 
read  Chateaubriand,  where  the  word  stands,  he 
would  have  been  prompt  to  take  away  blandices 
also. 

Victor  Hugo  and  his  friends  were  avenged  for 
Dupuis  et  Cotonet,  by  Musset.  He  might  un- 
wind himself  from  the  tangle  of  the  formulas 
used  by  the  younger  school,  but  nevertheless  he 
has  romanticism  in  his  marrow.  The  soul  of  the 
newer  times  was  in  him,  and  to  drive  it  out  did 
not  depend  upon  his  will,  for  the  movement  of 
1830  had  brought  something  more  weighty  and 
tenacious  than  a  literary  form.  As  Brunetiere 
well  expresses  it,  the  most  original,  peculiar,  and 
distinguishing  element  in  romanticism  was  a 
"  combination  of  the  liberty  and  sovereignty  of 
the  imagination  with  the  expansion  of  the  poet's 
personality."  Changing  the  terms,  and  sticking 
to  things  in  themselves,  romanticism  is  lyrisme 
— lyrical  rapture.  The  definition  looks  as  if 
Musset  himself  had  inspired  it,  so  well  does  it 


ALFRED    DE    MUSSET  95 

fit  him.     He  always  took  pleasure  in  putting 
himself,  in  his  own  person,  into  his  work. 

A  taste  for  this  became  an  imperious  necessity 
after  the  grand  passion.  The  bard  has  not  a 
word  left,  not  a  thought,  either,  for  anything 
else  than  his  own  affliction.  What  did  all  things 
else  signify  at  present?  Not  all  his  genius  was 
too  much  to  tell  the  terrors  of  the  catastrophe 
which  had  rent  his  life  in  twain,  compelling  men 
to  speak  of  the  Musset  before  Italy  and  the  Mus- 
set  after  George  Sand.  To  the  recoil  toward 
classical  form  corresponds  an  overflow  of  roman- 
ticism in  the  sentiment. 

The  Night  of  May  was  written  in  two  nights 
and  a  day,  in  the  spring  of  1835,  some  weeks 
after  the  conclusive  break  with  George  Sand. 
It  breathes  weariness,  deep  exhaustion.  There 
is  no  anger  in  the  poet's  answers  to  the  Muse 
who  incites  him  to  sing  of  springtime,  love,  glory, 
happiness  or  its  counterfeits,  pleasure  or  its 
shadow.  We  hear  the  gentle  plaint  of  a  sick 
man,  oppressed  by  his  disease,  entreating  that  he 
be  not  forced  to  speak 

Of  hope  I  cannot  sing, 
Nor  glory  nor  of  bliss, 

Nor  yet  of  suffering. 

The  mouth  a  silent  thing 
The  heart  to  hear,  I  wis. 

The  Muse  is  urgent.    For  want  of  any  better 
theme,  let  him  sing  of  his  pain: 


96  THE   LIFE   OF 

Despair  doth  fill  the  sweetest  songs  that  flow, 
Immortal  songs  that  only  throb  with  woe. 

The  Muse  invites  him  to  serve  up  his  own  heart 
at  the  banquet  of  the  gods,  as  the  pelican  parts 
its  vitals,  a  share  to  each  of  its  offspring,  but  he 
replies,  with  an  exclamation  of  horror: 

O  Muse  insatiable,  spectral  form! 

Not  this  from  me  shalt  thou  demand. 

Man  nothing  writes  upon  the  sand 
That  hour  when  sweeps  the  rising  storm. 

The  profound  causes  of  his  depression  appear  in 
the  foregoing  chapter.  He  had  been  making 
futile  attempts  to  clear  away  the  foul,  old  stains 
by  means  of  a  passion  which  was  itself  a  viola- 
tion of  the  moral  rule,  and  to  his  love-sorrows 
was  now  added  a  crushing  feeling  that  he  had 
made  a  capital  mistake  on  that  day  when  a  man 
chooses  the  ideal  which  is  to  be  his  reason  for 
existence.  After  the  pattern  of  the  romantic 
heroes,  he  had  required  passion  to  supply  the 
prop  of  his  moral  life,  and  that  prop  had  broken, 
and  left  him  bruised  and  exhausted. 

The  Night  of  May  appeared  in  the  Revue, 
wherein  Musset  brought  out  almost  everything 
that  had  come  from  his  pen  since  Namouna.  Six 
months  later  came  the  Night  of  December.  The 
poet  has  interrupted  his  course  to  write  the  Con- 
fession, which  in  the  latter  two-thirds  is  a  genuine 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET  97 

confession,  the  sincerity  of  which  moved  George 
Sand  to  tears.  He  did  not  change  his  subject 
in  writing  the  second  of  the  Nights,  whatever 
Paul  de  Musset  may  say  about  the  matter;  and 
here  is  the  place  to  explain  voluntary  confusions. 
He  had  two  reasons  for  altering  the  facts:  his 
hatred  of  George  Sand  inspiring  him  to  "  dimin- 
ish her  share,"  according  to  the  expression  of 
one  who  knew  him  well,  and  a  legitimate  wish 
to  bewilder  the  reader  in  the  medley  of  fashion- 
able women  compromised  by  his  brother.  The 
Night  of  December  gave  to  the  heroine  a  finer 
share  than  a  justiciary  of  such  harshness 
could  consent  to  assign  to  George  Sand.  We 
must,  however,  restore  it  to  her  on  the  faith 
of  testimony  which  in  my  eyes  is  not  to  be 
rejected. 

The  first  part  of  the  piece  is  a  mysterious  tissue 
of  dreams.  The  poet  seems  himself  a  phantom, 
which  soon  dissolves,  as  he  has  been  left  at  each 
stage  of  his  earthly  pilgrimage.  The  vision 
appears  and  disappears,  like  the  intermittent 
dreams  of  troubled  sleep.  It  is  forever  the  same 
and  forever  different;  thus  does  the  real  man 
undergo  an  incessant  transformation  and  re- 
newal. 

Suddenly  the  tone  is  changed.  The  poet,  in 
panting  phrase,  relates  the  cruel  separation,  and 
declares  that  he  was  guilty,  and  that  his  mistress 
would  not  forgive: 


98  THE    LIFE    OF, 

Begone,  begone,  and  in  that  heart  of  ice 

Bear  pride  content  away. 

I  feel  mine  young  and  stout  and  gay, 
And  many  a  woe  it  may  entice, 

With  what  you  brought,  to  stay. 

The  epilogue  of  Solitude  is  so  awkward,  cold, 
and  powerless  to  interpret  anything,  that  it  might 
well  be  cut  out. 

The  Night  of  December  will  receive  extraor- 
dinary life  the  day  when  there  shall  be  printed 
at  the  end,  as  a  commentary,  two  letters  of  Mus- 
set  received  by  George  Sand  the  winter  previous 
— one  as  to  an  unjust  complaint  which  he  made, 
and  his  mad  fear  lest  she  refuse  to  forgive,  the 
other,  written  in  pencil,  and  in  an  extreme  mental 
disorder  about  visions  which  he  has  just  had  of 
a  fantastic  world,  in  which  their  two  specters  took 
strange  shapes,  and  held  converse  in  dream. 
Musset  had  recalled  all  that  time  in  writing  the 
December  Night.  What  has  been  taken  as  pure 
fancy,  in  the  marvelous  piece,  rests  upon  a  basis 
of  reality. 

Contemporaries  united  in  recognizing  a  fresh 
female  influence  in  the  Letter  to  Lamartine  of 
March,  1836,  despite  the  opening  of  the  famous 
narrative : 

As  when  abandoned  by  one  void  of  truth 
I  first  knew  sorrow  in  that  day  of  youth. 

These  two  verses  and  some  others  seem  to  indi- 
cate that  there  was  some  mixture  or  confusion, 


ALFRED   DE    MUSSET  99 

as  it  were,  in  Musset's  regrets  while  he  was  wri- 
ting the  Letter  to  Lamartine.  The  piece,  how- 
ever, is  in  a  poetic  vein  which  is  less  even  and 
pure  than  that  of  the  Nights.  O  My  Only  Love 
is  a  poem  which  breaks  into  sobs,  but  there  are 
merely  rhetorical  parts  in  the  opening  concern- 
ing Byron  and  in  the  plaudits  addressed  to 
Lamartine. 

The  end  is  of  a  lively  interest  for  the  biog- 
rapher. This  is  the  first  time  that  Musset  con- 
fides to  us  his  opinions  as  to  those  fundamental 
questions  whose  solution  is  the  great  business  of 
the  being  who  thinks.  He  begins  by  adopting 
without  examination  the  God  of  Lamartine,  a 
simplification  which  may  be  too  complete: 

The  heavens  are  His  and  boundless  be: 
To  One  alone  belongs  immensity. 

Thereupon  he  glorifies  the  relations  of  the  hu- 
man soul  to  the  Infinite  in  strophes  of  real  gran- 
deur. The  poet  has  been  rewarded  for  having 
this  once  drawn  inspiration  from  springs  eternal 
and  untroubled  by  the  mire  of  earthly  passions: 

Upon  thy  knees,  insensate  creature,  fall: 
Immortal  is  the  soul,  though  death  seem  all. 

By  adding  to  this  the  fragment  which  sums  up 
the  Hope  in  God,  "  despite  of  me  the  Infinite 
torments  me,"  we  have  the  whole  of  Musset's 
religion,  Musset  cured,  according  to  his  own 
phrase,  of  the  "  vile  malady  of  doubt."  To  tell 


100  THE    LIFE    OF 

the  truth,  his  religion  is  but  a  religiosity  which 
exacts  little,  is  not  sufficiently  incommoding. 
The  nature  of  it  and  its  limits  he  himself  has 
traced  in  a  letter  to  the  Duchesse  de  Castries 
(1840) :  "  Belief  in  God  is  innate  in  me,  dogma 
and  practise  are  impossible  for  me;  but  I  would 
not  deny  myself  anything;  certainly,  in  this  re- 
spect I  am  not  mature." 

The  conclusion  of  the  Letter  to  Lamartine  was 
a  parenthesis  in  the  occupations  of  Musset.  How 
soon  it  was  closed,  the  Night  in  August  will  at- 
test. Musset  has  written  nothing  more  impious, 
in  this  sense,  that  he  has  nowhere  exalted  the 
"  idolatry  of  the  creature  "  to  so  great  a  height 
and  with  so  much  eloquence,  leaving  that  alone 
as  an  horizon  for  degraded  human  kind,  seeing 
that  alone  as  the  end  of  "  immortal  nature." 
What  a  hymn  to  Eros !  What  a  potent  evocation 
of  the  impassive  deity  who  strides  through  our 
blood  and  laughs  at  our  tears  [  He  grows  to  an 
enormous  stature  as  the  poet's  accents  glow  ever 
more  and  more.  He  fills  the  universe  with  his 
divinity,  and  prompts  the  bard  to  utter  sacrile- 
gious verses. 

I  choose  to  sing  of  joy  and  idleness, 
I  give  my  genius  for  one  single  kiss: 
Of  love  I  swear  to  live  and  die  in  bliss. 

Behold  him  again  among  those  whom  Bossuet 
mentions,  "  spending  a  life  in  filling  the  universe 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          101 

with  the  mad  follies  of  their  youth  gone  astray." 
Retribution  did  not  make  him  wait.  The  mem- 
ory of  George  Sand  came  back  like  a  master  in 
that  devastated  heart,  and  it  had  never  been  far 
away.  That  he  may  have  had  other  mistresses 
is  nothing  to  the  point.  Certainly  it  is  not  the 
same  love  as  that  which  he  had  bestowed  upon 
George  Sand,  the  article  which  he  next  handed 
out,  as  he  might  have  done  with  a  packet  of  sweet- 
meats, to  a  long  procession  of  the  fair  and  frail, 
and  of  grisettes  besides. 

This  turning  back  toward  the  past  produced 
the  October  Night,,  the  last  and  finest  of  the 
series,  bursting  and  dying  down  like  a  storm 
brought  by  the  gale  and  suddenly  swept  away. 

At  first  a  slow  movement,  giving  an  impres- 
sion of  serene  peace.  The  poet  assures  the  Muse 
that  his  cure  is  so  thorough  that  it  soothes  him 
to  tell  her  of  bygone  sufferings. 

You  shall  know  all  and  I  will  tell  to  you 
The  ill  that  one,  a  woman,  aye  can  do. 

He  begins  rather  calmly  the  story  of  a  night 
spent  in  waiting  for  the  faithless  one.  The  onset 
of  the  tempest  is  soon  heralded  by  thrilling  verses, 
but  the  poet  still  holds  himself  in  check.  Sud- 
denly the  storm  breaks  loose : 

Great  God!  deliver!    I  behold,  'tis  she! 


102  THE   LIFE    OF 

The  movement  becomes  headlong  and  raging. 
The  efforts  of  the  Muse  to  appease  her  foster- 
child  serve  only  to  bring  the  thunder-crash: 

Shame  on  thee,  thou  hast  taught  me  treason, 
Horror  and  wrath  have  reft  me  of  my  reason! 

Maledictions  continue  to  resound  for  a  longer 
time  still,  but  at  last  he  consents  to  listen  while 
the  Muse  talks  of  pardon,  and  teaches  him  to 
bless  the  bitter  lessons  of  sorrow.  He  grows 
calmer  and  makes  surrender,  and  forgives  with 
a  heart  swollen  with  bitterness : 

Thou  from  my  memory  art  exiled, 
Thou  fragment  of  a  passion  wild! 

The  real  forgiveness  kept  them  waiting  three 
years  more.  In  September,  1840,  Musset  went 
to  visit  Berryer  at  the  chateau  in  Augerville.  He 
crossed  the  forest  of  Fontainebleau  in  a  carriage, 
in  mute  contemplation  of  the  phantoms  rising 
before  him  at  every  turn  of  the  wheels.  Seven 
years  had  elapsed  since  he  threaded  that  forest 
with  George  Sand  in  the  young  ardor  of  their 
passion,  and  the  sight  of  the  places  that  were 
witnesses  of  his  happiness  poured  into  his  soul 
a  sweet  and  unexpected  consolation. 

After  coming  back  to  Paris  he  met  her — the 
one  he  could  never  forget — in  the  corridor  of  the 
Italiens.  He  took  his  pen,  on  reaching  his  home, 
and  he  wrote,  almost  at  one  burst,  the  incompara- 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          103 

ble  Souvenir — a  poem  impregnated  with  a  rever- 
ence due  to  the  "  relics  of  the  heart,"  and  full 
of  the  idea  that  a  sentiment  is  precious  according 
to  its  sincerity  and  intensity,  independently  of 
the  joys  or  griefs  which  it  may  procure.  Dide- 
rot said :  "  The  first  oath  sworn  by  two  beings 
of  flesh  and  blood  was  at  the  foot  of  a  rock  fallen 
into  dust;  they  called  as  witness  of  their  con- 
stancy a  sky  that  is  never  the  same;  everything 
in  and  around  them  was  passing  away,  and  they 
believed  their  hearts  to  be  free  from  vicissitude. 
O  children  always!  "  Musset  makes  answer: 

Mad!  says  the  sage.     Happy!  the  poet  cries. 

The  pieces  which  we  have  now  reviewed  are  not 
to  be  separated.  They  form  the  epilogue  to  the 
romantic  drama  of  Venice  and  of  Paris,  and  they 
are  the  original  portion  of  Musset's  poetical 
work,  with  reservation  of  the  Don  Juan,  of 
Namouna,  and  of  certain  pieces  in  the  earlier 
collections. 

On  Musset's  earliest  manner  had  lain  the  yoke 
of  the  fashion  in  rhythm,  style,  scenery,  and 
choice  of  subject.  In  a  word,  he  had  received 
from  without  some  share  of  his  inspiration.  In 
the  group  of  poems  dominated  by  the  Nights, 
nothing  is  conceded  to  foreign  influences.  As 
Sainte-Beuve  has  said,  "the  inspiration  bursts 
out  from  within,  whence  come  also  the  flame  and 
the  breath  to  color  and  give  fragrance  to  nature." 


104  THE   LIFE    OF 

The  poet  is  altogether  absorbed  in  himself  and 
in  the  spectacle  of  nature,  and  "  his  charm  con- 
sists in  the  mixture,  in  the  alliance  of  the  two 
springs  of  impression — that  is,  of  profound  sor- 
row, and  of  a  soul  open  still  to  every  living  im- 
pression. The  poet  feels  spring  coming  back 
again,  and  he  feels  its  intoxicating  spell.  He 
grows  more  sensitive  than  before  to  the  number- 
less beauties  of  nature,  to  verdure,  to  flowers,  to 
the  rays  of  the  morn,  the  songs  of  birds,  and  he 
wears  his  lily  and  eglantine  as  fresh  as  when  he 
was  fifteen."  Musset,  set  free  and  become  him- 
self again,  has  been  without  parallel  in  our 
poetry. 

Of  the  short  poems  which  fill  the  other  two- 
thirds  of  the  New  Poetical  Works,  not  one  rises 
to  the  same  height — far  from  it.  Some,  like  Sad- 
ness and  On  the  Dead,  display  emotion.  Others, 
like  Fortunio  or  Ninon,  are  tiny  masterworks  of 
grace  and  sentiment.  Others,  smaller  yet  and  by 
no  means  masterpieces,  have  a  certain  manner 
like  the  eighteenth  century.  Finally,  there  are 
trifles — affected  eif usions  and  insignificant  noth- 
ings— and  there  is  all  Dupont  and  Durant,  so 
remarkable  for  the  stamp  of  the  verse ;  we  should 
compare  it  to  the  Plaideurs  and  Boileau's  real- 
istic verse,  in  order  to  grasp  thoroughly  in  what 
way  and  measure  Musset  had  classical  instincts. 
In  this  pell-mell  of  rimes,  very  few  pieces  bring 
us  anything  new  or  essential.  We  might  disre- 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          105 

gard  almost  all  without  guilt  of  treason  com- 
mitted against  the  poet. 

If,  now,  we  turn  back  and  ask  ourselves  what 
rank  The  Tales  and  the  Spectacle  occupy  in  the 
whole  of  his  work,  we  are  not  to  hesitate  to  recog- 
nize the  rank  as  inferior  to  that  of  the  New 
Poems.  Musset  had  not  yet  gained  a  conscious- 
ness of  his  own  character  and  powers.  He  was 
held  down  by  the  authority  of  the  romantics,  and 
at  heart  he  was  the  least  romantic  of  men.  It 
was  in  vain  that  in  audacity  he  outstripped  all 
the  others;  in  his  bold  strokes  we  feel  the  arti- 
ficial. An  observant  historian  of  French  versi- 
fication— M.  de  Souza — speaking  of  the  revival 
of  lyric  verse  in  our  century,  makes  no  account 
of  Musset's  first  works.  In  his  eyes  they  have 
no  more  importance  than  Gautier's  Albertus: 
"  They  were  verses  of  youthful  bravado,  so  to 
speak,  in  which  all  the  exaggerations  of  the 
earliest  poetic  spark  grew  stronger,  and  the  poets 
themselves,  by  their  later  work,  pushed  them  into 
the  background."  This  decision  is  extremely 
severe  and  absolute.  Souza  is  interested  merely 
in  the  technique  of  the  verse,  while  those  early 
poems  have  value  of  another  kind.  The  fresh 
bloom  of  genius  is  a  priceless  treasure,  not 
to  be  replaced  by  anything,  and  here  it  shines 
with  splendor.  It  is  a  festival  for  the  mind  to 
see  this  happy  youthf ulness,  with  full  and  prodi- 
gal hand,  flinging  felicitous  imagery  gaily  here 


106  THE   LIFE   OF 

and  there,  and  the  inventions  of  a  fresh  fancy, 
wanton  and  charming  ideas,  or  the  kindling  sen- 
sations of  the  twentieth  year.  Let  us  beware  of 
disdaining  this  gift,  and  let  us  recognize  that  we 
must  search  in  the  succeeding  volume  for  the  real 
technical  methods  of  Musset  which  to-day  bring 
down  upon  him  the  name  of  unskilful  workman. 
There  is  a  point  as  to  which  he  invited  and 
challenged  attack.  We  should  do  his  shade  a 
wrong  to  attempt  to  deny  that  his  rimes  are 
feeble,  and  worse,  at  times.  He  sought  to  make 
them  poor,  striving  toward  that  end,  and  reach- 
ing it.  Sainte-Beuve  very  rightly  blamed  him 
for  "  deriming  "  his  ballad  The  Andalusian.  He 
reproached  him,  too,  with  boasting  overmuch  to 
the  public  of  the  advantage  of  riming  badly: 
"  Musset 's  verses,  with  all  their  wit,  have  a  sort 
of  pretentiousness  and  fatuity  which  his  talent 
could  do  without.  There  is  always  a  certain  reac- 
tion against  rime  and  rimers,  against  lyric  poetry 
and  lofty  verse,  from  which,  after  all,  he  himself 
has  sprung.  It  is  a  slight  fault.  He  is  original 
enough  without  it.  But  from  the  outset  he 
wanted  to  sport  a  cockade  of  his  own,  and  he 
has  turned  ours  round."  Our  cockade  is  the  em- 
blem of  the  school  of  form,  which  Musset  was 
always  afraid  that  he  had  not  turned  quite  upside 
down.  He  would  have  been  chagrined  had  he 
been  able  to  read  the  page  on  which  M.  Faguet, 
after  commending  the  poor  rimes,  makes  haste 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          107 

to  add:  "  Well,  let  us  own  that  we  do  not  think 
of  them  when  we  are  reading."  Poor  Musset 
might  have  spared  the  pains  he  took  to  rime 
griser  and  levrier! 

Furthermore,  he  is  reproached  with  classical 
rhythms,  regular  caesuras,  repeated  negligence, 
and  easy  ways  of  contenting  himself.  In  other 
words,  certain  people  reproach  him  with  being 
neither  a  precursor  nor  a  faultless  poet,  and  each 
reproach  is  well  grounded.  It  would,  at  least,  be 
justice  not  to  fail  to  appreciate  this:  that  he  has 
made  the  most  of  the  technical  resources  to  which 
he  confined  himself. 

It  is  incontestable  that  after  the  Tales  he 
profited  hardly  at  all,  by  new  romantic  formulas, 
to  vary  his  alexandrines.  Musset,  in  his  second 
manner  calling  himself  reforme,  and  by  Sainte- 
Beuve  called  reldche,  admits  the  double  caesura 
sometimes,  but  this  kind  of  pause  has  little  im- 
portance. He  has  recourse  to  more  delicate 
rhythmic  elements  to  shade  and  modulate  his 
verse.  He  is  the  master  in  distributing  in  the 
body  of  a  line  accentuated  syllables  of  words,  or 
words  receiving  the  oratorical  stress.  He  was 
ignorant  of  none  of  the  infinitely  varied  effects 
produced  by  interlacing  mute  and  resonant  syl- 
lables— the  obscure  and  the  full.  He  discerned 
how  precious  the  mute  syllable  is — a  treasure  of 
the  French  language  of  poetry — and  how  useful 
in  prolonging  a  preceding  syllable. 


108  THE   LIFE   OF 

Instinct  revealed  the  mysterious  relations  ex- 
isting between  the  sonority  of  the  word  and  the 
image  to  be  evoked — a  power  independent  of  the 
value  of  the  idea  expressed,  a  power  which  the 
broad  movement  of  the  alexandrine  most  highly 
favors.  Finally,  the  just  or  false  scruples,  pre- 
venting Musset  from  disjointing  his  alexan- 
drines, were  not  in  the  way  of  a  mingling  of 
meters,  and  by  means  of  this  he  produced  the 
most  happy  effects,  particularly  in  the  Nights. 

Most  technical  processes  can  be  imitated  and 
transmitted.  Theodore  de  Banville,  in  his  trea- 
tise on  versification,  gives  recipes  by  means  of 
which  any  imbecile  may,  we  are  assured,  turn 
out  very  fine  verses.  But  the  choice  of  words, 
the  unexpected  value,  the  particular  resonance 
which  they  receive  under  the  poet's  pen — all  that 
is  not  to  be  imitated,  not  to  be  taught,  for  those 
are  not  things  controlled  by  the  poet's  will ;  they 
are  determined  beforehand  by  the  inmost  nature 
of  the  poetic  vision.  Thus,  in  the  case  of  Gau- 
tier,  the  epithet  is  almost  always  purely  material, 
and  it  expresses  no  more  than  color  and  form; 
and  often  it  is  the  same  with  Hugo.  But  in  his 
case  the  epithet  is  symbolic,  and  interprets  much 
less  the  real  aspect  of  things  than  the  ideas  called 
forth  in  ourselves,  the  impressions,  and  unwonted 
and  remoter  images.  Musset's  epithet  paints  at 
once  the  outward  appearance  of  the  object,  and 
its  poetic  meaning.  There  exists  seemingly  a 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          109 

necessary  accord  between  the  essence  of  things 
and  their  sensible  form.  This  may  be  an  error 
in  metaphysics,  but  what  would  become  of  poetry 
without  the  illusion?  We  may  judge  its  worth 
by  verses  in  which  Musset  has  revealed  with 
grandeur,  by  means  of  two  adjectives,  the  splen- 
dor of  the  summer  night,  and  the  emotion  it 
awakes  in  the  depths  of  the  soul : 

Voluptuous  mildness  of  melancholy  nights 
Springs  from  the  calyx,  of  the  flowers  around. 

In  the  following  the  epithets  make  us  see  the 
adorable  little  virgin,  and  open  her  innocent  soul 
before  us: 

A  maiden  in  fine  gold  from  tomes  of  legend  quaint, 
In  floods  of  velvet  dragging  tiny  feet. 

Those  who  like  the  curious  subject  of  rare  sen- 
sation will  perhaps  be  interested  in  learning  that 
Musset  possessed  color-hearing,  which  in  his  day 
was  never  discussed,  and  which  so  much  occupies 
the  attention  of  contemporary  psychologists.  In 
an  unpublished  letter  to  Madame  Jaubert,  he 
declares  himself  to  have  been  wroth,  when  dining 
with  his  family,  at  being  compelled  to  make  an 
argument  in  order  to  prove  that  fa  was  yellow, 
sol  red,  a  soprano  voice  fair,  and  the  contralto 
dark.  He  supposed  that  such  things  were  self- 
evident. 


110  THE    LIFE    OF 

As  we  mount  toward  the  spring  of  Musset's 
inspiration  we  find  it  not  hidden ;  and,  to  discover 
that  source,  we  have  no  need  that  he  should  make 
his  Muse  say: 

Which  is  the  poet,  thou  or  but  thy  heart? 
My  heart  is  poet! 

A  tender  sensibility,  and  one  that  was  formid- 
able, brought  to  him  the  consecrated  flame.  To 
it  he  owed  a  sincerity  which  he  could  not  have 
restrained,  even  had  he  wished,  and  a  passionate 
eloquence,  able  to  pity  sufferings  other  than  his 
own.  We  may  recall  the  Hope  in  God: 

Thy  pity  surely  was  profound 

When,  with  its  bliss  and  many  a  pang, 

This  wondrous  and  this  wretched  earth 
With  wailing  from  dark  chaos  sprang! 

But  the  price  he  paid  was  dreadful.  Because 
he  felt  with  a  painful  violence,  he  referred  every- 
thing to  sensation,  and  fixed  pleasure  as  the  ob- 
ject of  life.  Whensoever  a  soul,  noble  and  pure 
of  vulgarity  and  baseness,  has  fallen  into  this 
error,  it  has  sunk  into  an  incurable  melancholy, 
if  not  absolute  despair.  Musset  escaped  not  this 
fatality.  With  a  cheerful  wit  he  had  a  heart 
that  bled,  a  heart  that  was  disconsolate,  a  union 
less  seldom  seen  than  is  commonly  thought.  His 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          111 

poems  make  a  divinity  of  sensation,  but  from  the 
first  he  had  felt  the  bitter  relish  of  pleasure : 

Surgit  amari  aliquid  medio  de  fonte  leporum. 

For  this  reason  the  reading  of  his  poetry  leaves 
in  us  a  saddened  feeling.  The  bitter  relish  domi- 
nates all  the  others. 


CHAPTER   VI 

PROSE  WORKS — PLAYS 

MUSSET'S  debut  as  a  playwright  was  a  con- 
spicuous failure.  After  the  noise  made  by  his 
earlier  poems,  the  Odeon  asked  him  for  a  play, 
"  the  newest  and  boldest  possible."  He  wrote 
the  trifle  called  the  Venetian  Night,  which,  in 
times  of  literary  peace,  would  have  passed  un- 
perceived,  and  which  fell  before  a  storm  of  hisses 
on  the  1st  of  December,  1830.  This  rebuff  had 
the  happiest  consequences. 

The  author,  in  his  resentment,  declared  that 
he  would  write  no  more  for  theaters.  Hence 
he  felt  himself  untrammeled  by  any  anxiety  to 
obey  the  fashion  which  gives  plays  a  transient 
and  factitious  showiness,  for  which  they  must  pay 
in  wrinkles  of  premature  old  age.  He  now  had 
only  to  attend  to  the  higher  and  immutable  ele- 
ments of  art,  the  soul  and  its  passions,  the  laws 
of  life  and  their  fateful  action.  Neglecting  the 
ever-changing  conventions  of  the  theater,  dis- 
daining unsettled  formulas,  the  offspring  of  the 
hour  and  of  caprice,  he  wrote  the  least  perishable 
works  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Since  he  re- 
nounced the  task  of  writing  for  his  own  time, 
Musset  wrote  for  all  time. 

112 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          118 

We  are  not  to  imagine  that  his  dramatic  pro- 
ductions would  have  been  almost  the  same,  had 
he  hoped  to  see  them  performed.  It  is  not  doubt- 
ful that  if  he  had  continued  to  write  for  the 
stage  after  he  had  broken  with  the  Cenacle,  his 
works  would  have  passed  through  the  same  evo- 
lution as  his  poetry,  in  the  same  classical  direc- 
tion. Musset,  dehugotized,  had  his  eyes  opened 
wide  to  the  defects  of  the  romantic  drama. 
While  he  believed  in  its  vitality,  he  thought  that 
there  was  room  beside  it  for  a  severer  form  of 
art:  "  Would  it  not  be  a  fine  thing  to  essay,  in 
our  days,  the  real  tragedy,  not  that  of  Racine, 
but  that  of  Sophocles,  in  all  its  simplicity,  with 
strict  observance  of  rules?  "  "  Would  it  not  be 
a  bold  enterprise,  but  a  praiseworthy  one,  to 
purge  the  stage  of  those  empty  speeches,  philo- 
sophical madrigals,  and  displays  of  twaddle 
which  burden  the  boards  at  the  present  time?  " 

"  Would  it  not  be  a  great  novelty  to  awake  the 
Greek  muse,  venturing  to  show  her  to  the  French 
in  her  grandeur  and  sublime  atrocity? 

"  Would  it  not  be  curious  to  see  her  in  the  en- 
counter with  the  modern  drama,  which  often  con- 
siders itself  terrible  when  it  is  only  ridiculous; 
to  see  her  as  she  was,  wild,  inexorable,  in  the 
bright  days  of  Athens,  when  the  bronze  urns 
quivered  at  the  sound  of  her  voice?  " 

This  was  not  mere  idle  talk.  Musset  labored 
for  the  drama  once  after  the  failure  of  1830. 


114  THE   LIFE    OF 

Rachel  had  requested  a  play,  and  he,  without 
wavering,  undertook  a  classical  tragedy,  think- 
ing at  first  of  the  Alcestis  of  Euripides.  This 
project  having  been  put  off  till  a  later  date,  he 
came  down  to  a  Merovingian  subject.  A  falling 
out  with  Rachel  interrupted  The  Servant  to  the 
King  (1839).  Some  scenes,  however,  survive, 
and  they  do  not  cause  a  very  lively  regret  for  the 
loss  of  the  others;  they  promised  to  be  part  of 
a  tragedy  of  distinction,  and  it  is  matter  of  slight 
importance  for  French  literature  that  we  possess 
one  distinguished  tragedy  more  or  less,  while  it 
is  highly  important  that  we  have  Lorenzaccio  and 
No  Trifling  with  Love. 

Musset,  we  must  add,  was  of  the  number  of 
the  warm  admirers  of  Ponsard's  Lucrece.  He 
wrote  to  his  brother  in  1833:  "  M.  Ponsard,  a 
young  writer  who  comes  from  the  country,  has 
brought  out  at  the  Odeon  a  tragedy,  very  fine 
despite  poor  acting.  He  is  the  lion  of  the  day. 
The  talk  is  all  of  him,  and  justly  so." 

Blessed,  then,  be  the  hisses  which  received  the 
Venetian  Night  so  roughly!  Musset,  no  longer 
troubling  himself  henceforth  about  being  fit  for 
the  stage,  took  no  further  pains  to  seize  his 
dreams  on  the  fly,  and  to  fix  them,  such  as  they 
were,  on  paper.  To  this  emancipation  from 
every  rule  we  owe  an  historical  dream,  which  is 
the  only  Shakespearian  play  in  our  language  and 
of  our  theater,  and  half  a  dozen  of  adorable 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          115 

dreams  concerning  love,  in  which,  as  Gautier 
says,  "  melancholy  is  chatting  with  cheerfulness.'* 
The  idea  of  Lorenzaccio  germinated  in  Mus- 
set's  mind  during  the  swift  hours  spent  in  Flor- 
ence with  George  Sand,  at  the  very  end  of  1833. 
The  noble  city  still  wore  the  frowning  girdle  of 
crenelated  walls  with  which  the  republicans  of 
the  fourteenth  century  had  surrounded  it,  and 
which  was  demolished  in  our  day  to  widen  the 
ephemeral  capital  of  the  young  kingdom  of 
Italy.  Florence  had  preserved  in  all  its  grim 
severity,  that  dark  and  hard  look  which  contrasts 
so  strangely  with  the  pure  and  winding  lines  of 
its  smiling  hills,  and  which  makes  it  the  most 
astounding  example  of  how  far  the  genius  of 
man  can  break  free  from  the  tyranny  of  nature. 
The  common  people's  quarters,  not  yet  thrown 
open  to  the  light  of  day  by  broad  avenues,  en- 
tangled their  narrow  and  tortuous  streets,  favor- 
able to  riot  and  ambuscade  about  the  fortress- 
palaces  of  the  Strozzi  and  the  Riccardi.  The 
entire  city,  to  the  mind  of  him  who  could  under- 
stand the  tale  told  by  the  stones,  illustrated  and 
commented  upon  the  ancient  chronicles  of  the 
Florentines.  Musset,  profiting  by  the  lesson, 
found,  as  he  turned  the  leaves  of  those  chronicles, 
the  subject  of  his  drama:  the  murder  of  Alexan- 
der de  Medici,  tyrant  of  Florence,  perpetrated 
by  his  cousin  Lorenzo,  and  the  uselessness  of  the 
murder  for  liberating  the  city.  A  little  idle  saun- 


116  THE   LIFE    OF 

taring  about  the  town  furnished  him  with  the 
frame  and  setting.  A  peculiar  mixture  of  his- 
torical intuitions  and  personal  souvenirs  effected 
the  rest.  Paul  de  Musset  says,  in  Lui  et  Elle, 
that  the  piece  was  written  in  Italy.  Then  it  must 
have  been  in  Venice,  in  January,  1834,  during 
the  three  or  four  months  elapsed  between  the 
coming  of  Alfred  and  his  sickness. 

The  action  of  Lorenzaccio  puts  under  our 
eyes  a  revolutionary  fiasco,  with  all  its  train  of 
intrigue  and  violence,  in  the  splendid  and  rotten 
Italy  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Through  these 
agitations,  which  are  depicted  in  warm  colors,  a 
gloomy  tragedy  unfolds  in  a  bewildered  and  des- 
perate heart,  which  it  fills  with  a  shuddering, 
despondent  grief.  Once  more  we  have  the  his- 
tory of  the  irreparable  degradation  of  man  bro- 
ken with  debauchery. 

O'er  it  the  sea  might  roll  nor  wash  away  the  stain. 

Lorenzaccio  de  Medici  is  an  idealist  and  an 
Utopian,  a  republican  of  1830.  He  believes  in 
virtue,  in  progress,  in  human  greatness,  in  the 
magic  potency  of  words.  He  was  twenty  when 
he  saw  the  demon,  the  tempter  of  dreamers  of 
his  kind:  "A  demon  fairer  than  Gabriel:  liberty, 
our  country,  human  happiness,  all  those  words 
resound  at  his  coming  like  the  chords  of  a  lyre, 
the  noise  of  the  silver  scales  of  his  flashing  wings. 
Tears  fall  from  his  eyes,  and  make  earth  teem, 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          117 

and  in  his  grasp  he  holds  the  martyr's  palm.  His 
words  purify  the  air  round  his  lips;  his  flight  is 
so  swift  that  none  can  say  whither  his  course. 
Beware !  Once  in  my  lif  e  I  have  seen  him  career 
athwart  the  sky.  As  I  bent  over  my  books,  the 
touch  of  his  fingers  made  my  hair  to  quiver  like 
the  feathers  of  a  bird."  Ever  since  this  radiant 
apparition  swiftly  darted  through  the  study  in 
which  Lorenzo  was  pursuing  in  peace  art  and 
science,  the  student  has  been  giving  up  his  slug- 
gard repose.  He  has  sworn  to  slay  tyrants  in 
pure  love  of  mankind,  and  in  some  degree  also 
from  pride.  He  has  begun  to  live  with  this  idea : 
"  I  must  be  a  Brutus." 

The  ruler  of  downtrodden  Florence  is  a  cruel 
debauchee,  Alexander  de  Medici.  Lorenzo  coun- 
terfeits the  same  vices  to  gain  his  confidence,  to 
creep  up  to  his  side,  and  to  assassinate  him.  He 
debases  himself  even  to  becoming  the  master  of 
his  shameful  pleasures,  the  accomplice  in  his 
crimes,  an  object  of  reproach,  of  infamy,  of 
whom  his  mother  can  never  think  without  weep- 
ing, and  whom  the  common  folk  call  Lorenzaccio 
in  their  contempt.  But  finally  the  hour  for  cast- 
ing the  mask  away  has  struck.  The  Duke  shall 
perish,  Florence  be  free.  The  new  Brutus,  when 
about  to  deal  the  blow,  perceives  with  consterna- 
tion that  no  man  can  pollute  his  soul  with  im- 
punity. That  is  an  unf orgiven  crime  for  which 
no  atonement  can  be,  which  pursues  the  guilty 


118  THE   LIFE   OF 

man  even  to  the  tomb.  Lorenzo  has  put  on  a 
mask,  a  disguise  to  throw  off  at  will,  but  debauch 
has  mastered  him  and  gangrened  him  to  the 
vitals,  and  there  will  be  no  escape:  "I  have 
broken  myself  in  to  this  trade.  Vice  was  a  gar- 
ment ;  now  it  is  glued  to  my  skin.  Truly  a  ruffian 
am  I,  and  whenever  I  jest  about  my  fellow  I  feel 
as  sad  as  death  amid  my  merriment." 

With  virtue  lost,  he  has  lost  faith.  His  so- 
journ in  the  great  confraternity  of  vice  has  made 
him  despise  men,  one  not  even  believing  in  the 
cause  for  which  he  has  given  more  than  life.  He 
is  about  to  free  his  country,  offer  the  republicans 
a  chance  to  bring  freedom  back,  and  he  knows 
that  their  selfish  indifference  will  not  profit  by 
it  all;  that  the  people,  freed  from  Alexander's 
yoke,  will  throw  themselves  into  the  arms  of  some 
other  tyrant.  Yet  will  he  slay  the  Duke,  because 
the  design  of  this  murder  is  the  last  fragment 
of  that  time  when  he  was  pure  as  the  lily,  and 
that  blood,  the  tyrant's  blood,  will  wash  away  his 
dishonor. 

Philippe:  "Why  wilt  thou  slay  him,  if  thou 
hast  such  thoughts? " 

Lorenzo:  "  Why?    Canst  thou  ask  that?  " 

Philippe:  "  If  thou  dost  think  the  murder  use- 
less to  thy  country,  why  do  it?  " 

Lorenzo:  "And  that  thou  askest  to  my  face? 
Look  at  me,  pray.  I  was  fair  of  face  and  calm 
and  pure." 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          119 

Philippe:  "  O  the  abyss  thou  openest  to  me!  " 
Lorenzo :  "And  dost  thou  ask  why  I  slay  Alex- 
ander? Shall  I  drink  poison,  leap  into  Arno? 
Shall  I  become  a  specter,  and  if  I  smite  a  skel- 
eton shall  no  sound  come?  If  I  am  the  shadow 
of  myself,  shall  I  snap  that  sole  thread  that  ties 
my  heart  to-day  to  some  fibers  of  my  heart  of 
yore?  Canst  thou  imagine  that  this  assassina- 
tion is  all  the  virtue  left  me;  that  for  these  two 
years  I  have  been  slipping  down  a  precipice,  and 
that  the  murder  is  the  one  blade  of  grass  my 
nails  can  clutch?  Have  I  no  pride,  because  I 
have  no  shame?  Shall  I  permit  my  life's  enigma 
to  expire  unspoken?  Yea,  could  I  return,  could 
my  apprenticeship  to  vice  fade  away,  I  perad- 
venture  could  spare  that  drover.  But  I  love 
wine  and  gaming,  women  also.  Understand? 
If  thou  honor  aught  in  me,  it  is  the  murder, 
perchance  because  thou  wouldst  not  do  it.  They 
are  covering  me  with  mire,  these  democrats;  my 
ears  ring  with  infamous  jibes;  men's  execration 
poisons  the  bread  I  chew;  it  is  enough  to  be  spit 
upon  by  nameless  wretches  who  shower  insults 
on  me  to  be  dispensed  from  butchering  me,  as 
they  ought.  Enough  of  hearing  human  gabblers 
bawling  to  the  winds:  the  world  must  learn 
whereof  I  am  and  what  he  is.  God  be  thanked, 
perhaps  to-morrow  I  will  kill  Alexander." 

The  murder  done,  he  tastes  a  few  moments  of 
unspeakable  happiness. 


120  THE   LIFE    OF 

Lorenzo :  "  How  beautiful  this  night !  How 
pure  the  sky!  Breathe,  heart  of  mine  o'ercome 
with  joy! " 

Scoronconcolo :  "  Come,  master ;  we  must  be- 
gone." 

Lorenzo :  "  How  sweet  and  balmy  is  the  eve- 
ning breeze !  and  in  the  meadows  how  the  flowers 
unfold!  Nature  magnificent !  Repose  eternal!" 

Lorenzo:  "Ah,  God  of  goodness!  What  a 
moment! " 

This  is  the  hosanna  of  the  creature  set  free 
from  ill.  Short  illusion,  brief  joy!  While  Flor- 
ence surrenders  to  another  Medici,  Lorenzo  feels 
that  vice  never  will  let  him  loose,  and  he  goes 
to  offer  himself  to  the  daggers  of  the  hired  assas- 
sins who  pursue. 

In  the  Cup  we  saw  a  sketch  of  this  dramatic 
personage,  but  the  causes  of  Frank's  wretched- 
ness lurked  under  a  veil  in  part,  while  in  this  case 
the  warning  is  as  clear  as  it  is  painful.  Musset, 
in  a  rash  and  libertine  youth,  has  gone  downward 
on  the  edge  of  that  abyss  into  which  Lorenzo 
has  slipped,  and  he  insists  that  he  must  tell  his 
contemporaries  that  to  climb  up  again  is  im- 
possible. 

In  this  drama  there  are  two  other  personages 
for  which  he  had  but  to  appeal  to  souvenirs, 
memories  which  were  less  his  own.  His  gold- 
smith and  his  silk-dealer  are  Paris  shopkeepers 
at  the  time  of  Louis  Philippe.  The  goldsmith 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          121 

was  doubtless  a  subscriber  to  the  National,  and 
had  Armand  Carrel's  portrait  in  the  back  shop. 
The  silk-dealer  is  a  monarchist — he  takes  the  in- 
ventory of  stock,  and  knows  that  courts  make 
trade  good.  One  criticizes  everything  that  the 
court  does  and  holds  it  to  account  when  custom- 
ers don't  pay,  the  other  rubs  his  hands  when 
there  is  a  ball  at  the  Tuileries. 

The  Merchant :  "  I  declare  such  fetes  delight 
me,  they  do.  You're  in  bed,  quiet  and  still,  with 
a  corner  of  the  curtain  drawn  back;  you  watch 
the  lights  now  and  then  as  they  come  and  go  in 
the  palace;  you  catch  a  bit  of  dance-music  with- 
out paying  for  it,  and  you  say,  that's  my  stuff 
dancing,  my  fine  silks,  the  good  Lord's  own,  on 
the  dear  bodies  of  those  fine  and  loyal  gentle- 
men." 

The  goldsmith  also  opens  shop :  "  More  than 
one  dances  and  gets  no  pay,  neighbor;  the  ones 
they  soak  with  wine,  and  then  rub  up  against 
the  walls  with  the  least  respect." 

The  discussion  goes  on  as  they  take  their  shut- 
ters down.  "  The  Lord  preserve  his  Highness !  " 
concludes  the  shopkeeper  as  he  goes  in  again. 
"  The  court  is  a  fine  thing." 

"  The  court!  The  people  carry  it  on  their 
backs,  don't  you  see? "  is  the  goldsmith's  retort 
from  the  threshold  of  his  shop. 

These  good  people  had  never  in  their  lives  seen 
the  Arno  nor  the  Ponte  Vecchio.  They  lived  in 


122  THE   LIFE    OF 

the  Rue  de  Bac  at  the  corner  of  the  quay,  and 
they  supplied  their  wares  to  our  grandmothers. 

The  remainder  of  Musset's  dramatic  work  has 
love  for  its  almost  exclusive  subject,  but  it  is 
infinitely  diversified.  The  love  of  the  young  girl, 
of  women,  of  coquettes,  of  the  Christian  wife, 
love  in  Alfred  de  Musset  at  different  ages  and 
in  all  his  moods:  the  frank  stripling  or  the  man 
already  blase,  gay  or  melancholy,  ironical  or  pas- 
sionate. For  he  has  put  himself  into  all  his 
swains  in  his  unwearied  desire  to  tell  us  his 
thought  as  to  that  thing  which  he  esteemed  most 
divine  in  this  world.  "  The  ideas  of  Musset  as 
to  love,"  said  Jules  Lemaitre,  "  reach  far  back, 
across  the  ages,  to  those  of  the  primitive  poets. 
Love  is  the  first-born  of  the  gods,  the  force  mov- 
ing the  universe."  It  is  not,  as  Valentine  declares 
to  Cecile,  the  eternal  thought  which  makes  the 
spheres  to  gravitate,  but  the  love  eternal.  These 
worlds  live  because  they  seek  one  another,  and 
the  suns  would  fall  into  dust  if  one  of  them 
ceased  to  love.  "  Ah!  "  exclaims  Cecile,  "  all  of 
life  is  there.  Yes,  all  life."  Love  so  understood 
is  lifted  to  the  rank  of  a  holy  mystery.  Pagan, 
if  you  will,  but  grand  and  poetic. 

The  Chandler  ought  to  come  first  in  a  life  of 
Musset,  though  not  written  till  1835.  This  play 
brings  him  forward  at  the  hour  of  charm  and 
danger  at  which  the  collegian  was  grown  to 
man's  estate  and  was  awaking  as  a  poet.  The 


ALFRED    DE   MUSSET          123 

adventure  of  Fortunio,  minus  the  denouement, 
happened  to  him  in  1828,  during  the  summer 
spent  at  Auteuil.  Jacqueline  lived  in  the  en- 
virons of  Paris.  For  sake  of  the  happiness  of 
gazing  at  her,  playing  with  her  fan,  or  bringing 
a  pillow  for  her,  Musset  would  cross  Saint- 
Denis  plain  unceasingly,  and  in  those  days  there 
was  no  railway  nor  tramway.  But  he  was  seven- 
teen, the  heroic  age  of  love,  and  he  was  romantic 
also. 

He  gave  Fortunio  his  face  and  shape.  "A 
little  blond  fellow,"  says  Jacqueline's  servant. 
:<  That's  it,"  answers  her  mistress,  "  I  see  him 
now.  He  has  not  a  bad  face,  with  his  fair  locks 
over  his  ears  and  his  little  innocent  look.  He 
is  running  after  grisettes,  this  gentleman  with 
the  blue  eyes? " 

We  may  believe  that  at  that  age  he  had  also 
the  timid  but  passionate  heart  of  his  hero;  that, 
like  him,  he  was  more  or  less  an  angel  of  candor 
and  a  little  monster  of  effrontery;  and  if  the 
part  breathes  a  delicate  fragrance  of  poetry,  that 
does  not  impair  the  resemblance.  Be  that  as  it 
may,  the  personage  is  very  winning — a  cherub 
full  of  emotion,  and  touched  with  melancholy. 
How  different  he  is  from  Beaumarchais'  little 
scamp  who,  with  his  smart  ways,  runs  after  any 
petticoat.  What  a  contrast  to  our  cherubs  of  the 
end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  with  their  sterile, 
calculating  souls!  The  declaration  of  Fortunio, 


124  THE    LIFE    OF 

third  clerk  to  the  notary,  to  his  fair  mistress  has 
not  grown  obsolete  in  form,  as  it  is  irreproach- 
ably simple.  The  declaration,  in  its  essence,  be- 
longs to  a  departed  race  of  adolescents  whose 
hearts  are  young,  who  fear  not  to  let  the  tears 
tremble  on  their  eyelids.  The  rhetoricians  of  our 
day  would  make  merry  at  its  simple  eloquence; 
they  are  better  trained  in  arguments  to  touch 
the  heart  of  some  corrupt  little  bourgeoise. 

Jacqueline:  "  That  was  a  pretty  song  you  sang 
just  now  at  table.  Whom  was  it  made  for? 
Would  you  let  me  have  it,  all  copied  out? " 

Fortunio:  "  It's  written  for  you;  I  am  dying 
of  love,  and  my  life  belongs  to  you." 

Jacqueline:  "  Indeed!  I  thought  that  the  re- 
frain forbade  you  to  tell  her  name? " 

Fortunio:  "  Ah!  Jacqueline,  have  pity  on  me; 
this  is  not  the  first  day  I  suffer.  For  two  years 
I  have  followed  the  print  of  your  feet  through 
the  hornbeams.  For  two  years,  without  your 
knowing  of  my  existence,  you  never  went  out  or 
in,  your  light  and  trembling  shadow  never  ap- 
peared behind  your  curtains,  you  never  opened 
your  window,  you  never  stirred  out  of  doors 
without  my  being  there  and  seeing  you.  I  could 
not  come  near,  but,  thank  God !  your  beauty  be- 
longed to  me  as  the  sun  to  every  one;  I  sought, 
I  breathed  it,  I  lived  on  the  shadow  of  your  life. 
You  spent  the  morning  on  the  threshold  of  the 
door,  and  every  night  I  came  back  and  shed  tears 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          125 

there.  If  any  words,  fallen  from  your  lips,  made 
their  way  to  me,  I  repeated  them  every  day. 
You  cultivated  flowers,  and  my  room  was  filled 
with  them.  In  the  evening  you  sang  at  the  piano, 
and  I  knew,  word  for  word,  all  your  romances. 
Whatever  you  loved,  I,  too,  loved,  and  I  intoxi- 
cated myself  with  all  that  passed  through  your 
lips  or  within  your  heart.  Alas !  I  see  you  smile. 
God  knows  my  suffering  is  real,  and  that  I  am 
dying  of  love  for  you." 

The  Jacqueline  of  history  was  insensible  to  this 
sweet  eloquence,  as  also  to  the  reproaches  where- 
with Fortunio  overwhelmed  her  when  he  discov- 
ered that  he  had  served  as  a  screen  for  Captain 
Clavaroche.  She  did  not  repent  of  the  crime 
against  love  when  she  deluded  the  green,  con- 
fiding heart  in  which  her  perverse  skill  had  caused 
passion  to  burst  forth,  when  she  dropped  into  it 
the  serpent  poison  of  suspicion  of  which  he  was 
never  cured,  when  she  played  "  with  all  that  is 
most  sacred  under  heaven  like  a  cheat  playing 
with  loaded  dice."  The  harm  which  she  herself 
had  done  made  her  smile. 

Follies  of  Marianne  appeared  on  the  15th  of 
May,  1833.  In  this  play  Musset  put  a  share  of 
himself  into  his  personages:  Octave,  the  preco- 
cious libertine  with  a  brilliant  exterior  hiding  a 
whited  sepulcher  wherein  sleeps  the  dust  of 
youth's  generous  illusions,  is  Musset,  his  wicked 
ego  inspired  with  sensuality  and  blasphemy,  the 


126  THE   LIFE   OF 

slayer  of  his  genius.  "  I  cannot  love,"  says 
Octave.  "  I  am  but  a  heartless  debauchee;  I  do 
not  respect  women;  what  love  I  may  inspire  is 
like  the  love  I  feel,  the  passing  intoxication  of 
a  dream.  My  merry  mood  is  but  the  mask  of 
the  actor;  my  heart  is  older  than  my  cheery 
spirits;  my  senses  are  blunted,  too  surfeited  for 
more." 

Coelio  the  lover  is  Musset  again,  the  Musset  of 
his  better  moments — bashful  and  sensitive,  and 
somewhat  saddened  by  Octave  and  his  immoral- 
ity, so  that  he  uselessly  expostulates  with  him. 
How  marked  this  duality  was  in  Musset  has  been 
pointed  out  already :  "  All  who  knew  Alfred 
know  how  he  resembled  at  once  Octavio  and 
Coelio,  although  these  two  figures  seem  at  the 
antipodes  to  each  other."  Strangers  themselves 
knew  it.  On  one  of  the  first  occasions  when 
George  Sand  saw  Musset,  she  told  him  how  peo- 
ple asked  her  whether  he  was  Octave  or  Coelio, 
and  said  that  she  had  answered  "  both,  I  should 
think."  Some  days  later  he  wrote  her  a  letter 
to  recall  the  anecdote,  to  accuse  himself  of  show- 
ing only  the  Octave,  and  to  beg  leave  to  make 
Coelio  speak.  And  this  was  his  declaration,  the 
beginning  of  their  romance.  He  also  said  of 
himself,  knowing  well  his  want  of  equilibrium, 
"  I  weep  or  I  burst  into  laughter." 

This  sort  of  doubling  caused  inward  dialogues 
whereof  we  have  an  authentic  sample.  The  con- 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          127 

versation  of  Uncle  Van  Buck  with  his  good-for- 
nothing  nephew,  at  the  opening  of  Prudence 
Spurns  a  Wager,  is  historic.  This  is  a  talk  which 
Musset  had  with  himself  one  morning  in  his  bed- 
room, after  some  foolish  conduct.  His  better 
ego  had  wrapped  him  in  his  gown,  the  symbol  of 
virtue,  had  seated  him  in  a  respectable  family 
armchair,  and  had  given  the  other  ego  a  very  tart 
scolding,  and  the  latter  answered  with  Valen- 
tine's impertinences.  Some  days  after  the  dia- 
logue was  written,  and  the  whole  piece  came 
springing  from  it.  The  following,  from  the 
first  scene  of  the  Follies  of  Marianne,  has  the 
appearance  of  having  occurred  in  the  same 
room  before  a  mirror,  after  the  return  from  a 
bal  masque. 

Coelio:  "  What  masquerade  is  this?  Isn't  that 
Octave?" 

Octave :  "  My  good  sir,  how  is  that  graceful 
melancholy  doing? " 

Coelio:  "  Octave!  You  are  crazy,  with  a  foot 
of  rouge  on  your  cheeks!  Where  did  you  get 
that  accouterment?  Not  ashamed,  and  in  broad 
daylight?" 

Octave:  "  O  Coelio!  You  are  mad,  with  a  foot 
of  white  on  your  cheeks!  Where  did  you  find 
that  broad  black  coat?  Not  ashamed,  and  in 
mid-carnival? " 

Coelio:  "What  a  life!  Either  you  are  tipsy, 
or  I  am  not  myself." 


128  THE    LIFE    OF 

Octave:  "  Either  you  are  in  love,  or  I  am  my- 
self." 

Moral  of  the  sermon:  Octave  will  undertake 
to  introduce  his  friend  to  the  fair  Marianne. 

To  complete  the  resemblance  between  his  two 
heroes  and  his  own  two  egos,  Musset  condemned 
the  debauchee  to  become  the  involuntary  execu- 
tioner of  the  nobler  personage.  The  Coelio  of 
real  life  was  continually  assassinated  by  Octave, 
who  also  breathed  out  his  remorse  in  poetical 
lamentations,  as  he  does  in  the  piece.  "  I  alone 
in  the  world  have  known  him.  For  me  only  that 
silent  existence  was  no  mystery.  The  long  eve- 
nings we  spent  together  are  like  fresh  green  in  the 
dust ;  they  shed  upon  my  heart  the  only  drops  of 
dew  which  have  fallen  there.  Coelio  was  the 
better  part  of  me;  it  has  gone  up  to  heaven  with 
him.  .  .  .  This  tomb  is  mine;  I  am  lying 
beneath  this  cold  stone.  For  me  they  sharpened 
their  swords,  and  me  they  killed."  Having  said 
so  much  on  the  ill  he  was  doing  himself,  Musset 
picked  up  his  hat  and  went  back  to  uproarious 
dinners  and  long  suppers  in  the  forest  shade. 
Crelio  came  back  to  life  only  to  be  killed  anew, 
and  each  time  his  life  was  a  little  more  frail. 

As  for  the  subject  of  the  piece,  it  is  contained 
in  one  of  the  epigrams  in  Namouna:  "A  woman 
is  like  your  shadow:  run  after  her,  she  will  flee; 
fly  from  her,  she  will  run  after  you." 

Again,  Fantasia  is  concerned  with  a  crime 


ALFRED    DE   MUSSET          129 

against  love.  Written  before  the  Italian  jour- 
ney, this  work  was  published  on  January  1, 1834. 
Princess  Elsbeth,  daughter  of  a  king  of  Bavaria, 
a  Bavaria  situated  in  the  blue  realm  of  fancy, 
has  through  mere  policy  consented  to  wed  the 
Prince  of  Mantua,  and  she  weeps  when  alone 
because  her  fiance  is  an  imbecile  whom  she  could 
not  possibly  love.  She  is  not  ignorant  that  it  is 
the  lot  of  kings'  daughters  to  marry  the  first 
comer  according  to  the  exigencies  of  politics,  but 
it  all  costs  her  suffering  through  her  romanesque 
governess's  fault,  for  the  latter  has  been  teach- 
ing her  homely  sentiments.  Elsbeth  gently  re- 
proaches her:  "  Why  did  you  let  me  read  so  many 
stories  and  fairy-tales?  Why  did  you  sow  in 
my  poor  thoughts  so  many  strange  and  mysteri- 
ous flowers?  "  The  harm  is  now  beyond  relief. 
In  contempt  of  policy  and  etiquette  .her  young 
heart  swells  with  love-germs  all  ready  to  unfold, 
and  these  must  be  blighted  when  she  becomes  the 
wife  of  a  horrible  idiot.  Elsbeth  is  all  resigna- 
tion in  order  to  spare  the  two  kingdoms  a  war. 
A  sacrifice,  inspired  by  the  Christian  idea  that 
love  ought  to  be  immolated  to  higher  duties,  ap- 
pears a  monstrous  sacrifice  to  Musset,  who,  dis- 
guised as  Fantasio,  goes  to  tell  the  young  Prin- 
cess so,  and  this  new  incarnation  is  not  one  of  the 
weakest  in  point  of  resemblance. 

He  was  Fantasio — always  by  fits  and  freaks 
— toward  his  twentieth  year.     His  talk  was  at 


130  THE   LIFE   OF 

that  day  rich  in  the  unforeseen,  as  in  the  dialogue 
with  the  plain,  respectable  Spark.  His  conduct 
upset  all  prevision,  his  own  included.  His  humor 
was  to  go  on  by  jumps  and  somersaults,  accord- 
ing as  he  was  passing  through  this  or  that  mental 
state  defined  by  Lemaitre  with  enlightening  sa- 
gacity. "  Fantasio  is  a  Bohemian,  and  Musset 
has  lent  him  his  soul.  Fantasio  is  uneasy  because 
he  knows  too  much  of  love.  He  believes  himself 
in  despair,  he  sees  how  ugly  and  useless  the  world 
is — because  he  is  no  longer  a  lover.  Like  Musset, 
he  has  the  love  of  love,  and  after  each  experi- 
ment an  unconquerable  disgust,  and  after  that 
an  invincible  need  of  making  the  experiment 
again,  and  in  ever-recurring  surfeit  a  desire  that 
always  revives;  in  short,  the  great  human  mal- 
ady, the  only  malady:  impatience  at  being  but 
ourselves,  impatience  that  the  world  is  only  what 
it  is,  and  imperishable  illusion  rising  endlessly 
from  imperishable  despair."  Fantasio  in  the  com- 
edy piously  undertakes  to  break  off  a  match  that 
would  be  an  offense  against  the  divine  Eros. 
He  rigs  himself  out  in  the  hump  and  periwig  of 
the  court  clown,  buried  the  night  before,  and  gets 
into  the  palace. 

Read  the  rest  who  will,  for  it  is  not  to  be  ana- 
lyzed. It  is  a  pleasant  dream,  all  in  dialogue,  and 
we  must  allow  it  to  lull  us  without  exacting  too 
much  logic  or  fearing  to  let  imagination  wander. 
The  initiated  would  like  to  ferret  out  symbolic 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          131 

meanings  in  the  play.  The  first  meeting  of  the 
Princess  and  Fantasio  may  be  recalled: 

Elsbeth:  "There  must  be  some  one  behind 
those  bushes.  Is  it  the  ghost  of  my  poor  clown 
that  I  can  see  among  those  blue  flowers,  sitting 
in  the  grass?  Answer  me.  Who  are  you? 
What  are  you  doing  there,  picking  those  flow- 
ers?" 

Fantasio:  "I  am  an  honest  flower-gatherer, 
and  I  wish  your  bright  eyes  good  day." 

George  Sand  alludes  to  this  in  one  of  her 
glowing  letters  sent  to  Musset  during  a  quarrel; 
we  have  already  cited  some  fragments  from  it. 
Here  is  something  hitherto  unpublished,  written 
after  coming  home  from  the  Italiens  at  midnight. 
She  had  been  there  unattended.  "  Here  am  I, 
in  my  sailor  hat,  alone,  distressed  at  coming  in 
among  these  black-faced  men.  And  look  at  me; 
I  am  in  mourning,  hair  cut  short,  eyes  ringed, 
cheeks  hollow,  looking  stupid,  old.  And  up  there 
are  all  those  blonde,  white,  dressed-up  ladies, 
rose-colored  feathers,  big  curls,  bouquets,  and 
bare  shoulders.  And  where  am  I  ?  Lo !  up  there, 
over  me,  the  field  where  Fantasio  is  gathering  his 
blue  flowers!" 

The  denouement  of  Fantasio  is  all  smiles. 
Eros  is  victorious:  sweet  Elsbeth  will  not  marry 
her  booby  of  a  suitor.  It  is  true  that  two  peoples 
will  cut  each  other's  throats;  but  the  death  of 
some  thousand  men  never  was  an  important  mat- 


132  THE    LIFE    OF 

ter  in  a  fairy-tale,  where  they  can  be  brought  to 
life  again  with  a  touch  of  the  wand,  any  more 
than  purses  of  gold  thrown  by  fair  princesses 
to  their  needy  subjects,  any  more  than  anything 
that  may  be  shocking  if  we  have  the  ill  luck  to 
see  the  piece  on  the  stage.  Pasteboard  trees  and 
an  electric  sun  are  much  too  real  for  Fantasio. 

No  Trifling  with  Love  is  perhaps  Musset's 
dramatic  masterpiece.  The  piece  is  of  narrower 
scope  and  less  power  than  Lorenzaccio,  but  it  is 
perfect.  Written  after  coming  home  from  Italy, 
it  proclaims  the  masculine  resignation  of  the 
Souvenir,  to  the  woes  which  love  brings  in  its 
train : 

O  nature !  O  my  mother !  And  yet  have  I  less  loved  ? 

"  I  would  love,  but  would  not  suffer,"  says 
Camille,  tutored  at  a  convent  in  every  kind 
of  downy,  namby-pamby  precaution.  "  Poor 
child,"  answers  Perdican,  "  you  talk  of  some 
sister  who  appears  to  have  had  a  destructive  in- 
fluence on  you;  she  has  been  deceived,  has  de- 
ceived herself,  and  is  desponding.  Are  you  sure 
that  were  her  husband  or  her  lover  to  stretch 
out  his  hand  through  the  grating  in  the  parlor, 
she  would  not  stretch  out  hers? " 
Camille:  "  What?  I  did  not  hear." 
Perdican:  "Are  you  sure  that  were  her  hus- 
band or  her  lover  to  come  and  tell  her  to  suffer 
again,  she  would  say  no?" 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          133 

Camille:  "I  think  so." 

By  the  time  she  says  this  she  no  longer  be- 
lieves it,  and  Perdican's  farewell  pierces  her  heart 
like  a  sharpened  arrow. 

"Farewell,  Camille!  Back  to  the  convent, 
and  when  you  hear  those  hideous  tales  which  have 
poisoned  you,  answer  what  I  say:  All  men  are 
liars,  fickle,  false,  tattlers,  hypocritical,  proud 
and  base,  contemptible  and  sensual;  all  women 
are  perfidious,  tricky,  vain,  inquisitive,  and  de- 
praved .  .  .  but  there  is  one  holy  and  sub- 
lime thing  in  the  world — the  union  of  two  of 
these  beings,  imperfect  and  frightful  as  they  are. 
In  love  we  are  often  deceived,  often  wounded, 
and  often  unhappy,  but  we  love;  and  when 
we  are  at  the  brink  of  the  grave  we  turn 
to  look  back,  and  we  say:  Often  have  we  suf- 
fered, sometimes  been  deceived,  but  we  have 
loved." 

He  goes  forth  to  defy  rashly  the  vindictive 
divinity  who  allows  none  to  trifle  with  love.  Per- 
dican's cruel  trifling  with  a  poor  peasant  girl 
causes  two  to  be  victims:  the  guileless  Rosette, 
who  being  deceived  dies,  and  the  proud  Camille, 
who  is  to  waste  away  beneath  her  veil  with  sor- 
rowing over  a  happiness  of  which  she  has  had 
but  a  glimpse.  Love  has  taken  vengeance  on 
two  foolish  beings  who  have  not  been  truthful 
to  him. 

It  was  Musset's  last  drama.    A  beam  of  cheer- 


134  THE   LIFE    OF 

fulness  came  and  rested  upon  him,  and  Barberine 
shows  us  how  an  intelligent  woman  makes  those 
beardless  simpletons  repent  who  openly  profess 
to  disbelieve  in  woman's  virtue,  just  to  make  us 
believe  that  they  have  always  been  irresistible. 
Noiselessly,  quietly,  Barberine  gives  young  Ro- 
semberg  a  lesson  which  he  will  always  bear  in 
mind,  and  perhaps  with  no  great  bitterness.  He 
is  so  much  a  child  that  he  is  just  the  one  to  find 
amusement  in  earning  his  supper  at  the  spinning- 
wheel.  "  He  is  a  young  man  of  good  family," 
she  writes  to  her  husband,  "  and  not  vicious.  All 
he  needed  was  to  learn  to  spin,  and  I  have  taught 
him.  Should  you  see  his  father  at  court,  tell  him 
to  have  no  anxiety  about  him.  He  is  in  the  top 
tower-room,  where  there  is  a  good  bed,  a  good 
fire,  and  a  spinning-wheel  and  distaff,  and  he  is 
spinning.  You  will  think  it  extraordinary  that 
I  choose  this  for  him,  but  as  I  noticed  that  he 
needed  only  a  power  of  reflecting,  I  thought  it 
was  for  the  best  to  teach  this  trade,  which  allows 
him  to  reflect  at  leisure  while  it  makes  him  earn 
a  living.  You  know  that  of  yore  our  tower  was 
a  prison;  I  lured  him  to  it  by  telling  him  to  await 
me  there,  and  then  I  locked  him  in.  The  wicket 
in  the  wall  is  very  convenient;  they  hand  him 
his  food  through  it,  and  he  is  doing  well,  for  he 
has  the  healthiest  look  in  the  world,  and  one  can 
see  him  get  fat." 

Rosemberg  is  so  free  from  spite  that  he  is 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          135 

growing  stout!  A  good  little  fellow,  and  he 
will  not  try  it  again. 

We  have  spoken  of  the  Chandler  and  told  the 
origin  of  Prudence  Spurns  a  Wager,  in  which 
Cecile  is  near  akin  to  Barberine.  She  also  un- 
dertakes, young  as  she  is,  to  correct  the  young 
coxcombs  who  fancy  they  know  women  because 
of  successes  achieved  in  the  side  scenes  or  at  in- 
ternational charity  bazaars.  The  punishment  is 
very  mild  this  time.  Valentine  has  played  very 
badly  a  mean  part;  he  was  a  fool,  and  it  is  no 
fault  of  his  that  he  did  not  become  odious.  Nev- 
ertheless, his  faults  are  forgiven,  and  at  the  de- 
nouement he  weds  Cecile.  The  chaste  love  of  a 
young  woman  has  been  a  shield  to  this  mauvais 
sujetj  preserving  him  from  punishment.  If 
some  straight-laced  reader,  deeming  him  unde- 
serving of  indulgence,  blames  his  unmerited  good 
fortune,  she  does  not  see  one  of  the  fairest  privi- 
leges of  her  sex,  that  of  purifying  by  honest 
affection  hearts  tainted  by  easy  pleasures,  and 
forcing  their  portals  for  the  incoming  of  respect 
and  duty.  Few  pages  have  been  written  as 
glorious  for  woman  as  the  scene  of  the  meeting 
in  the  forest,  at  the  end  of  which  the  conquered 
libertine  returns  thanks  to  innocence,  in  a  wild 
burst  of  joy  and  gratitude,  for  having  compre- 
hended nothing  that  he  has  said. 

Valentine:  "  Not  afraid?  Did  you  come  here, 
and  never  trembled?" 


136  THE    LIFE    OF 

Cecile:  "Why?  What  should  I  fear?  You, 
or  the  night? " 

Valentine:  "Why  not  me?  Who  gives  you 
confidence?  I  am  young,  you  are  beautiful,  and 
we  are  alone." 

Cecile:  "  Well!    What  harm  in  that?  " 

Valentine:  "  I  know;  there  is  nothing  wrong, 
but  listen,  and  let  me  fall  down  on  my  knees." 

Cecile:  "  What  ails  you  now?  You  are  shiver- 
ing." 

Valentine:  "  It  is  fear,  it  is  joy." 

Valentine,  having  just  made  discovery  of  pu- 
rity, worships  it  upon  his  knees.  He  is  saved, 
but  it  is  a  narrow  escape. 

Musset  afterward  wrote  two  more  little  prov- 
erbs, and  they  are  full  of  wit:  in  1837  A  Ca- 
price, and  in  1845  The  Door  Must  be  Either 
Open  or  Shut.  The  graceful  Carmosine  was 
written  in  1850.  Among  a  number  of  tiny,  tame 
pieces,  the  last,  The  Donkey  and  the  Stream, 
of  1855,  has  a  right  to  be  named,  because  of  one 
pretty  little  part,  that  of  the  ingenue.  Her  name 
is  Marguerite,  and  but  yesterday  she  was  playing 
with  her  doll.  With  nose  perked  up  and  eye 
alert,  she  has  brought  home  from  the  convent 
her  theories  as  to  marriage  and  how  to  make  the 
men  step,  which  she  applies  with  energy,  at  the 
risk  of  tears,  when  the  lover  pretends  to  take  her 
outbursts  too  seriously.  Her  lively  profile  forms 
a  dainty  close  to  a  procession  of  young  ladies 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          137 

which  has  no  pendant  in  our  dramatic  literature. 
Musset  had  not  lost  a  moment  when  he  spent 
nights  waltzing — not  always  in  time,  as  one  of 
his  partners  assures  me — and  chattering  with  his 
dancing-mate.  In  discussing  the  cut  of  a  dress 
or  the  rules  of  a  cotillion  figure,  he  had  been  fath- 
oming that  being,  as  close  and  enigmatical  as 
a  flower-bud,  the  young  girl.  Cecile,  Elsbeth, 
Carmosine,  and  that  little  Marguerite,  though 
there  is  hardly  a  glimpse  of  her,  will  be  his  wit- 
nesses before  posterity  when  men  accuse  him  of 
having  found  his  delight  in  audacious  pictures 
of  sensual  inspiration.  Their  charming  shadows 
will  attest  that  his  imagination  was  not  without 
its  people  of  virginal  figures,  and  the  ulcer  of 
contempt  never  was  secretly  gnawing  his  soul  at 
the  sight  of  young  maidens,  whether  peasants  or 
noble  ladies. 

Elsbeth  perceives  that  she  is  romanesque,  re- 
proaches herself,  and  at  the  same  time  feels  a 
certain  thankfulness  to  herself  for  the  defect. 
Family  interest  demands  her  marriage  to  an  ab- 
surd blockhead.  Too  good  and  too  straightfor- 
ward to  allow  her  dreams  to  come  between  her 
and  her  duty,  she  tastes  a  secret  pleasure  in  feel- 
ing that  duty  causes  her  a  pang,  and  that  she 
is  not  one  of  those  positive  and  cold  young 
women  whose  dreams  are  cheerful  and  not  iron- 
ical like  hers,  when  about  to  take  a  lout  as  hus- 
band. I  shall  be  a  lady  after  all,  which  may 


138  THE   LIFE   OF 

amuse  me;  I  shall  take  a  fancy  to  my  dresses, 
and  so  on — to  my  teams  and  my  new  livery: 
"  Happy  it  is  that  in  marrying  there  is  some- 
thing else  than  a  husband.  It  may  be  that  I  shall 
find  happiness  hidden  among  my  wedding-pres- 
ents." She  has  a  solid  fund  of  sound  sense  and 
clear  judgment,  but  she  has  had  an  opportunity 
to  read  a  number  of  English  novels,  and  in  her 
small  acquaintance  with  the  world  has  been  con- 
fused by  their  decent  romanesque  sentimentality. 

Cecile  has  no  liking  for  novels,  none  for  ro- 
manticism in  action.  She,  at  a  glance,  saw  that 
Valentine,  with  all  his  pretentions  to  clear-head- 
edness and  to  experience,  takes  for  reality  what 
is  only  literature,  and  her  reproaches  are  very 
nice:  "What  do  you  mean  by  jumping  into  a 
pit?  Risking  your  life,  and  for  what?  You  con- 
trived to  be  received  by  us,  and  your  wishing  to 
succeed  without  help  I  understand;  but  the  rest, 
of  what  use  is  that?  Do  you  like  novels?  " 

Valentine:  "  Sometimes  .  .  ." 

Cecile:  "  I  own  that  novels  do  not  please  me 
particularly.  Those  I  have  read  amount  to  noth- 
ing but  lies,  I  think,  everything  invented  on  pur- 
pose. They  are  always  talking  about  nothing  but 
seductions,  tricks,  intrigues,  and  a  thousand  im- 
possible things." 

She  is  not  the  one  to  play  the  misunderstood 
woman,  the  plague  of  romanticism,  whom  we 
have  not  yet  shaken  off,  and  who,  in  disguise 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          139 

after  disguise,  has  not  ended  her  appearances. 
Cecile,  according  to  her  promise,  will  give  her 
husband  good  bouillon,  and  will  love  him  with 
all  her  honest  little  heart,  because  he  is  her  hus- 
band, and  without  insisting  that  he  be  genius  or 
hero.  She  is  altogether  his  superior.  Valentine 
is  giddy  and  fast.  Cecile  will  be  his  reason  and 
his  conscience.  Call  to  mind  her  talk  with  the 
dancing-master:  "Mademoiselle,  with  all  I  say, 
you  do  not  make  the  right  movement.  Now  turn 
your  head  slightly,  and  round  your  arms."  Ce- 
cile: "  But,  sir,  if  you  do  not  want  to  fall,  you 
must  certainly  look  straight  ahead."  She  will 
look  ahead  for  two,  this  modest  and  exquisite 
creature,  and  her  husband  will  reward  her  with 
esteem  and  confidence. 

Camille  has  heard  more  of  the  evils  of  life;  she 
is  less  guileless  than  Cecile.  Musset  designed  to 
bring  out  the  difference  between  a  girl  reared  at 
home  and  one  brought  up  in  a  convent.  The 
former,  in  holy  ignorance  of  danger,  hastens  to 
the  rendezvous  appointed  in  the  woods  at  night 
by  a  man  whom  she  has  known  but  a  day,  and 
who  she  thinks  is  her  fiance.  The  other  answers 
her  playmate,  who  tries  to  clasp  her  hand,  in  the 
phrase  invented  in  the  convent,  which  Cecile 
would  not  comprehend:  "I  do  not  like  to  be 
touched."  Poor  Camille!  Just  eighteen,  she 
has  never  read  an  improper  book.  Yet  there  is 
neither  confidence  nor  joy  in  life  within  her 


140  THE   LIFE    OF 

youthful  heart,  touched  with  a  blight  through  the 
confidences  of  those  who,  after  shipwreck  in  the 
world,  find  in  convents  a  shelter  against  it  and 
themselves.  "  Do  they  know,"  asks  Perdican,  in 
consternation  at  her  precocious  disenchantment, 
"  do  they  know  that  they  are  committing  a  crime 
when  they  come  and  whisper  in  the  ear  of  a 
maiden  the  words  of  a  matured  woman?  Ah! 
What  a  lesson  for  them  to  give  you !  "  Camille, 
as  she  listens  to  these  bitter  stories,  sees  humanity 
through  a  horrid  dream;  and  she  prays  God  to 
have  nothing  of  the  woman  left  in  her. 

As  she  leaves  the  shadows  of  the  cloister,  her 
nightmare  is  dissolved.  '  You  were  going  away 
without  taking  my  hand,"  says  her  cousin ;  "  you 
wished  never  to  see  again  either  that  wood  or 
that  poor  little  fountain  which  is  watching  us  all 
in  tears;  you  denied  the  years  of  childhood,  and 
that  plaster  mask  which  the  nuns  fixed  on  your 
cheeks  refused  to  me  a  brotherly  kiss;  but  your 
heart  beat,  it  forgot  its  lesson  through  not  know- 
ing how  to  read,  and  you  have  come  again  and 
sat  down  on  the  grass  where  we  are."  Camille 
is  in  love,  and  her  dazzled  eyes  reopen  to  the 
truth.  Now  she  believes  in  love,  life,  happiness, 
and  in  Perdican.  With  joy  she  welcomes  suffer- 
ing. Her  pride  melted  and  she  became  a  weak 
woman  again,  when  their  imprudence  separated 
her  from  Perdican.  Poor  Camille! 

The  other  young  girls  in  Musset's  plays  have 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          141 

the  same  family  air  as  the  chorus  coryphees.  All 
these  chaste  heroines  have  two  features  in  com- 
mon. They  are  true  to  their  calling,  to  unfold 
through  love  and  wedlock,  and  they  are  very  hon- 
est, simple-hearted  Rosette  included,  whom  Per- 
dican  misleads  by  deceitful  words.  They  pos- 
sess the  charm  of  healthy  natures,  and  could 
have  been  conceived  only  by  a  poet  who,  through 
lost  illusions  and  through  failures,  treasured  an 
unimpaired  respect  for  young  girls.  Musset  at 
all  times  saw  the  Ninons  and  the  Ninettes  of  real 
life  with  the  eyes  of  a  believer,  and  they  inspired 
him,  in  recompense  therefor,  with  the  purest  ele- 
ment of  his  work. 

The  history  of  Musset's  dramatic  productions 
is  singular.  The  pieces  long  slept  in  the  collec- 
tion of  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes;  they  were 
not  particularly  noticed  at  the  time  of  their  ap- 
pearance, and  were  soon  forgotten.  Nor  did 
their  publication  in  book  form  in  1840  make  any 
noise  either.  They  were  almost  unknown  when 
Madame  Allan,  then  in  St.  Petersburg,  heard 
some  one  praising  a  little  Russian  comedy  which 
was  being  given  in  a  minor  theater.  She  wished 
to  see  it,  found  it  to  her  taste,  and  asked  for 
a  translation  in  order  to  perform  the  play  before 
the  imperial  court.  Some  one,  to  simplify  mat- 
ters, sent  her  a  book  entitled  Comedies  et  Pro- 
verb es  par  Alfred  de  Musset — the  little  Russian 
work  was  the  Caprice. 


142  THE   LIFE    OF 

Such  was  the  success  of  Madame  Allan  with 
the  piece  that,  on  coming  home  to  Paris,  in  1847, 
she  brought  it  in  her  muff,  and  on  the  27th  of 
November  played  it,  against  wind  and  tide,  at 
the  Comedie  Fran9aise.  No  one,  or  almost  no 
one,  knew  whence  it  came.  And  then  it  was 
badly  written :  "  '  Rebonsoir,  chere? '  In  what 
language  is  that? "  said  Samson  in  suffocating 
astonishment.  On  the  morrow,  a  complete  re- 
vulsion. Theophile  Gautier,  in  his  feuilleton, 
wrote:  "  This  little  act,  played  last  Saturday  at 
the  Fran9ais,  is  decidedly  a  great  literary  event. 
Since  Marivaux,  nothing  has  been  brought  out 
there  so  fine,  so  delicate,  so  sweetly  humorous  as 
this  tiny  masterpiece,  hidden  in  the  pages  of  a 
review,  where  the  Russians  of  St.  Petersburg, 
the  snow-bound  Athens,  had  to  find  it  in  order 
to  make  us  take  it."  Theophile  Gautier  next 
praised  the  "  prodigious  cleverness,  the  perfect 
craft,  the  marvelous  divination  of  stage  matters 
of  this  proverb,  not  written  for  the  boards  and 
nevertheless  more  adroitly  managed  than  any- 
thing of  Scribe's." 

The  Illustration  gave  a  lively  picture  of  the 
public  surprise  at  the  discovery  of  Musset  as  a 
dramatic  author :  "  An  unexpected  event  for 
everybody  at  the  Fran9ais  was  the  complete, 
gigantic,  stunning  success  of  a  wee  little  one- 
act  comedy."  Next  comes  an  eulogium  on  the 
poet,  and  thereupon  the  chronicler  returns  to  the 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          143 

Caprice:  "  The  wit  flashes  like  diamonds,  each 
scene  is  fairylike,  and  yet  it  is  true,  it  is  nature. 
The  spectator  is  enraptured." 

Admiration  so  great  staggers  us  somewhat,  as 
in  the  Caprice  we  see  a  piece  charming,  no  doubt, 
somewhat  better  than  smart,  offhand  stage  dia- 
logue, but  among  Musset's  productions  one  of 
the  least. 

However  this  may  be,  the  way  was  now  open, 
and  everything  else  passed  through  the  opening. 
The  Door  Must  be  Either  Open  or  Shut  was 
played  on  the  7th  of  April,  1848.  Prudence 
Spurns  a  Wager  was  performed  on  the  22d  of 
June  following,  on  the  eve  of  the  insurrection. 
"  I  thank  you,"  writes  the  author  to  Tattet,  "  for 
your  letter.  Nothing  has  happened  to  my  broth- 
er and  me  but  fatigue.  At  the  moment  of 
writing  this  I  am  doffing  my  uniform,  which  I 
have  hardly  taken  off  since  the  insurrection  be- 
gan. I  will  not  say  a  word  about  the  horrors 
now  over.  It  is  all  too  hideous. 

"Amid  the  above  charming  eclogues,  poor 
Uncle  Van  Buck,  you  see,  has  been  up  to  his 
neck.  Yet  his  success  was  complete,  and  no  ex- 
aggeration. It  was  the  immediate  eve  of  the 
insurrection;  I  found  the  hall  filled,  lined  with 
pretty  women,  clever  people,  a  parterre  of  great 
excellence  for  me,  very  good  actors — everything, 
in  fact,  for  the  best.  I  had  my  own  evening, 
and  I  took  it,  so  to  speak,  on  the  fly.  .  .  . 


144  THE   LIFE    OF 

Next  day,  good  morning!  Actors,  managers, 
author,  prompter — we  all  had  our  guns  in  our 
fists,  with  the  cannon  for  an  orchestra,  the  con- 
flagration for  illumination,  and  a  pit  full  of  rav- 
ing vandals.  The  militia  was  so  plucky  that  the 
spectacle  happily  made  our  hearts  beat  lustily. 
They  were,  most  of  them,  mere  boys.  I  had 
never  dreamed  of  anything  like  it." 

In  August  the  Chandler  had  its  turn,  Andre 
del  Sarto  in  November,  and  they  even  went  so 
far  as  to  play  the  unplayable  Fantasia  and  the 
Nights. 

One  of  the  causes  of  this  prodigious  success 
was  that  Musset,  in  the  theater,  appeared  to  be 
an  innovator  and  a  realist.  His  pieces  were  not 
made  by  formula,  by  the  romantic  or  the  classic, 
and  they  possessed  that  loftier  truth  which  is  the 
poet's  privilege.  "  Each  scene  is  a  fairy-scene, 
and  yet  it  is  true,  it  is  nature."  These  words 
are  a  summary  of  the  impressions  of  the  first 
spectators,  some  of  whom  went  so  far  as  to  re- 
proach Musset  with  being  too  much  la  nature. 
Auguste  Lireux  notes  it  a  propos  of  the  first 
presentation  of  the  Caprices,  in  1851.  ;'  We  are 
not  habituated  to  natural  pieces,  and  the  fancy 
which  resembles  truth  itself,  which  properly  dis- 
tinguishes Musset."  People  at  that  time  were 
too  fond  of  the  false  to  endure  the  truth  readily, 
and  he  sums  up  the  play  in  this  way:  "A  too 
cruel,  too  true  history!  " 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          145 

Some,  nevertheless,  were  scandalized  at  the 
sudden  rapture  of  the  public.  Sainte-Beuve, 
who  never  attached  great  importance  to  Musset's 
plays,  at  first  applauded  the  popularity  of  the 
Caprice.  When  he  saw  that  the  matter  was  look- 
ing serious,  and  that  the  longer  pieces  were  taken 
for  something  more  and  better  than  playful  ban- 
ter, his  indignation  prompted  him  to  write  in 
his  Journal:  "  Yesterday  I  saw  Musset's  little 
piece,  Prudence  Spurns  a  Wager,  at  the  Fran- 
9ais.  There  are  extremely  pretty  things  in  it, 
but  I  was  struck  with  its  incoherence  and  scant 
good  sense.  In  truth,  the  characters  are  taken 
from  a  very  strange  world:  the  lecturing  uncle, 
a  surly  fellow,  who  winds  up  tipsy;  the  young 
man,  who  is  rather  a  coarse  fop  than  an  intelli- 
gent and  amiable  being;  the  girl,  an  arrant  little 
puss,  a  mere  milliner  from  Rue  Vivienne,  pre- 
sented to  us  as  a  Clarissa,  not  formed  to  convert 
a  libertine  otherwise  than  by  a  caprice  of  which 
he  will  repent  fifteen  minutes  afterward;  the 
insolent  and  commonplace  baronne,  suddenly 
brought  out  at  the  end  like  a  mother  of  mercy — 
all  that  is  loose,  inconsistent,  and  without  se- 
quence. It  comes  from  a  world  which  is  fabu- 
lous, or  seen  in  song  and  feasting  when  wine  has 
done  its  work.  A  spirit  of  detail  and  an  unfore- 
seen drollery  compose  the  thing,  mending  the 
rents  in  the  tissue  at  every  moment.  But  there 
are  people  who  imagine  in  all  earnestness  that 


146  THE    LIFE    OF 

in  this  play  they  have  the  supreme  good  tone 
of  the  most  refined  society  lately  gone  by,  while 
the  truth  is  that  such  things  never  existed  any- 
where else  than  in  the  fumes  of  the  poet's  fancy 
on  his  way  home  from  smokers'  parliament.  I 
am  wrong ;  there  are  young  men,  and  even  young 
women,  who  so  far  are  infatuated  with  this  Mus- 
set  style  that  they  have  begun  to  imitate  it,  in 
their  way,  as  much  as  they  can,  and  to  model 
themselves  after  this  pattern.  In  this  case  the 
original  came  after  the  copy,  and  is  not  at  all 
an  original.  Alfred  de  Musset  is  the  caprice  of 
a  blase,  libertine  epoch."  One  must  feel  a  little 
touch  of  vexation  at  the  critic  whose  decision  has 
been  reversed  by  the  majority.  We  cited  this 
clumsy,  dull  page  because  it  fixes  the  moment 
when  the  glory  of  Musset,  after  a  confinement 
within  narrow  circles,  began  to  rise  higher.  The 
success  of  Caprice  did  more  for  his  reputation 
than  all  his  poems  put  together.  Within  a  few 
days  he  became  popular,  and  his  verses  profited 
thereby.  The  dramatic  author  had  given  an  im- 
pulse to  the  poet,  so  that  when  least  expecting 
it  he  began  to  soar  skyward. 

Musset's  prose  works  embrace,  besides,  the 
Novels,  Tales,  Miscellaneous  Works,  and  the 
Confession,  which  last  has  almost  always  had 
the  strange  fortune  to  be  judged  by  defects  or 
its  poorest  pages,  even  by  its  admirers.  The 
youth  of  thirty  years  ago  read  like  devotees 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          147 

the  declamations  in  the  two  earlier  parts,  wherein 
Musset  is  but  an  indifferent  pupil  of  Rousseau 
and  Byron.  The  youth  of  to-day  condemn  the 
book  from  the  same  chapters,  and  seem  not  to 
know  the  idyl  which  succeeds  them:  "While 
walking  one  evening  in  the  linden  path,  where 
it  enters  the  village,  I  saw  a  young  woman  step- 
ping forth  from  a  house  which  stood  apart.  She 
was  very  simply  dressed,  and  so  veiled  that  I 
could  not  see  her  face;  yet  her  shape  and  her 
gait  appeared  so  charming  that  for  a  while  I 
followed  her  with  my  eyes.  She  was  crossing 
a  meadow  near  by  when  a  kid,  feeding  at  large 
in  a  field,  ran  up  to  her;  she  caressed  it,  and 
looked  this  way  and  that  as  if  to  find  an  herb 
to  its  liking.  Near  me  I  saw  a  wild  mulberry; 
I  plucked  down  a  branch  and  went  forward, 
branch  in  hand.  The  kid  came  on,  very  slowly 
and  with  a  timid  look,  then  stopped,  not  daring 
to  take  the  branch  from  my  hand.  Its  mistress 
made  a  sign  to  embolden  the  kid,  but  its  look 
was  anxious.  She  came  a  few  steps  toward  me, 
put  her  hand  on  the  branch,  and  the  kid  took  it 
forthwith.  I  made  her  a  bow,  and  she  went  her 
way." 

This  is  the  first  meeting  with  Brigitte.  Not 
less  charming  is  the  picture  of  the  unpretentious 
home  of  the  pale  young  woman  with  the  great 
dark  eyes.  The  story  broadens  and  rises  with 
the  triumphant  return  of  love  into  those  two 


148  THE   LIFE    OF 

hearts — they  had  thought  themselves  to  be  all 
worn  out — and  the  scene  of  the  avowal  is  of  a 
grave  sweetness.  One  evening  they  are  on  Bri- 
gitte's  balcony,  contemplating  the  splendors  of 
night.  "  She  leaned  upon  her  elbow,  her  eyes 
fixed  upon  the  sky;  I  bent  beside  her  and  watched 
her  as  she  dreamed.  Soon  I  raised  my  eyes  my- 
self; a  voluptuous  melancholy  intoxicated  us 
both.  Together  we  breathed  the  mild  fumes 
which  floated  out  from  the  hornbeams,  and  we 
watched  the  last  faint  white  glimmerings  which 
the  moon  was  dragging  downward  as  she  sank 
behind  the  black  masses  of  the  chestnuts.  I  re- 
membered a  certain  day  when  I  had  gazed  with 
despair  on  the  boundless  void  of  the  beautiful 
sky,  and  the  memory  made  me  tremble.  Now  all 
was  overflowing!  I  felt  a  hymn  of  thanksgiving 
rise  in  my  heart,  I  felt  our  love  soaring  toward 
God.  My  arm  encircled  the  waist  of  my  dear 
mistress;  she  softly  turned  her  head:  her  eyes 
were  drowned  in  tears." 

The  ramblings  by  night  in  the  forest  of  Fon- 
tainebleau  are  peculiarly  beautiful,  likewise. 
George  Sand  and  Musset  walked  there  to- 
gether in  the  autumn  of  1833.  Their  feet  fol- 
lowed the  same  paths  as  Octave  and  Brigitte, 
their  hands  clung  to  the  same  bushes  as  they 
clambered  up  and  down  the  rocks.  They  ex- 
changed in  faint  tones  the  same  confidences. 
Brigitte's  male  attire,  her  cottonade  blouse, 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          149 

which  has  been  a  reproach  to  Musset  as  a  fault 
in  taste,  was  her  traveling  costume,  the  one  in 
the  first  Traveler's  Letter.  We  have  seen  the 
emotion  of  George  Sand  when  she  happened 
upon  the  hardly  disguised  tale  of  their  unfor- 
tunate passion  in  the  Confession.  This  scrupu- 
lous exactitude  explains  and  excuses  the  some- 
what prolonged  passages  in  the  fifth  part — a 
tedious  recital  of  quarrels  so  painful  that  his 
rival's  victory  at  the  end  of  the  volume  is  a  re- 
lief to  the  reader. 

As  a  whole,  it  is  a  work  of  art  of  great  un- 
evenness,  now  declamatory,  now  rising  higher, 
sometimes  tiresome,  but  a  book  of  price  through 
its  sincerity,  and  a  great  honor  to  Musset,  as  he 
gives  everywhere  in  its  pages,  without  hesita- 
tion or  reserve,  the  nobler  part  to  the  woman 
whom  he  has  loved,  and  who  yet  had  not  been 
free  from  reproach.  Now  that  all  the  veils  are 
lifted,  such  is  the  light  in  which  the  Confes- 
sion stands. 

The  Tales  and  Stones  are  little  narratives 
without  pretensions,  written  with  wit  or  senti- 
ment, according  to  the  subject.  In  these  Musset 
has  twice  or  thrice  attained  perfection.  The 
pearl  of  the  Tales  is  the  White  Blackbird,  in 
which  one  may  see  the  ill  consequences  of  being 
a  romantic  in  a  family  for  generations  devoted 
to  classic  verse.  At  the  first  note  which  the  hero 
risks  the  father  bounds  to  his  feet:  "  What's  that 


150  THE    LIFE    OF 

I  hear?  Is  that  the  way  the  blackbird  whistles? 
Is  that  the  way  I  whistle?  Is  that  whistling? 
Who  taught  you  to  whistle  so  against  all  usage 
and  rule? " 

"  Very  sorry,  sir,"  I  answered,  with  humility, 
"  I  whistled  as  well  as  I  could." 

"  That's  not  the  way  we  whistle  in  my  family," 
retorts  my  father,  beside  himself.  "  For  centu- 
ries we  have  whistled  from  father  to  son.  .  .  . 
You  are  no  son  of  mine;  you  are  no  merle." 

M.  de  Musset-Pathay  took  things  in  a  less 
tragic  fashion,  but  after  the  first  volume  written 
by  his  son  he  earnestly  believed  that  that  was 
not  the  way  to  whistle. 

The  white  blackbird,  repulsed  by  his  kindred, 
is  not  recognized  by  the  feathered  cenacles  when 
he  asks  for  an  asylum,  because  he  is  unlike  any- 
body else.  He  takes  to  singing  for  himself,  and 
becomes  a  famous  poet.  The  sequel  is  not  less 
transparent.  He  weds  a  white  blackbird,  who 
writes  novels  with  all  the  facility  of  George 
Sand:  "  She  never  rubbed  out  a  line  or  made  a 
plan  before  setting  to  work."  She  had  the  ad- 
vanced ideas,  also  of  the  author  of  Lelia,  at  all 
times  taking  care  to  attack  the  government,  by 
the  bye,  and  to  preach  emancipation  for  black- 
birds." The  feathered  poet  is  sure  that  he  has 
the  bird  of  his  dreams,  matching  his  color  as  well 
as  his  genius.  Alas!  his  wife  had  deceived  him. 
She  was  no  white  blackbird ;  she  was  only  a  bird 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          151 

like  all  the  blackbirds;  she  was  dyed,  and  she 
faded! 

The  stories  are  strewn  with  personal  souvenirs. 
When  the  love  is  not  Musset  in  flesh  and  blood, 
it  is  seldom  that  he  has  no  feature,  no  adventure 
in  common  with  his.  Almost  always  the  heroines 
are  drawn  from  life,  as  also  the  landscape,  in- 
teriors, episodes.  He  invented  but  little.  He 
wrote  from  "  human  documents,"  and  recounted 
"  things  of  the  life  he  had  lived,"  in  the  same 
fashion  as  our  naturalist  novelist.  But  he  did 
not  see  with  the  same  eyes. 

Musset  in  his  plays  used  a  poetical  prose  which 
has  few  rivals  in  our  language.  It  is  highly 
musical.  The  harmony  of  it  caresses  the  ear, 
the  rhythm  is  sweet  and  strong.  The  movement 
follows  with  pliant  faithfulness  the  course  of  the 
idea,  now  in  peace,  now  in  haste  and  passion. 
The  epithets  are  better  than  sonorous  and  rare; 
they  have  the  power  of  evocation.  The  ensemble 
is  picturesque  and  eloquent,  never  ceasing  to  be 
limpid.  The  art  in  this  is  very  simple  and 
delicate. 

His  offhand  prose  is  perfect,  a  frank  and 
transparent  language  in  which  the  expression  is 
right,  and  the  turn  of  the  phrase  natural  and 
clear  cut.  The  familiar  letters  are  lively,  and 
easy  also.  Some  of  these  were  printed  in  the 
Posthumous  Works,  but  all  that  I  have  com- 
pared with  the  originals  have  been  altered.  In 


152  THE   LIFE    OF 

those  days  the  duties  of  the  editor  were  under- 
stood otherwise  than  now.  Paul  de  Musset  did 
not  confine  himself  to  trimming,  but  he  insisted 
on  elevating  the  style  which  he  considered  too 
negligent.  At  a  pinch  he  would  modify  the  sense 
a  little.  Musset  had  written  to  his  marrcdne, 
a  propos  of  love,  "Z  have  burned  my  wings 
passably  in  due  and  proper  time  and  place,"  but 
Paul  prints  it,  "  They  have  burnt  my  wings 
passably  .  .  ."  Elsewhere  Musset  said,  re- 
garding an  article  for  which  he  was  asking  cer- 
tain information,  "  I  prefer  writing  a  mere  medi- 
ocre but  honest  page  to  composing  a  poem  in 
false  gilt  coin."  That  Musset  should  be  able 
to  write  a  mediocre  page  was  not  to  be  admitted ; 
and  in  the  volume  we  read,  "  I  prefer  writing  a 
simple  page."  "  Rosine  was  not  Spanish,  but 
she  was  witty,"  is  changed  to  "  Rosine  was  not 
frolicsome  "  in  the  notice  of  Mademoiselle  de 
Plessy.  Pages  are  entirely  rewritten,  so  that 
Musset,  if  he  had  seen  the  volume,  would  have 
been  thrilled  with  admiration  and  gratitude  for 
the  patient  zeal  of  his  brother;  but  perhaps  he 
would  have  recalled  a  kind  of  work  and  play 
combined  which,  in  the  time  of  his  youth,  aristo- 
cratic ladies  had  taken  up  with  a  rage.  In  the 
spring  of  1831  the  ladies  of  the  Faubourg  Saint- 
Germain  passed  their  days  sticking  sealing-wax 
in  circles  on  small  bits  of  cardboard,  which  thus 
became  candle-sconces.  Unable  to  see  anything 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          153 

useful  in  this  work,  Musset  asked:  "Are  the 
shops  all  out  of  sconces?  Whence  comes  this 
rage  for  bob&chesl "  Probably  his  brother's 
picking  work  would  have  seemed  to  him  hardly 
more  useful  than  the  manufacture  of  sconces  of 
sealing-wax. 


CHAPTER   VII 

THE  LAST  YEARS 

MUSSET  felt  an  inability  to  write  coming  over 
him  and  growing  into  powerlessness,  and  he  was 
not  ignorant  of  the  cause  of  it.  He  knew  that 
he  was  himself  destroying  his  own  intellect  day 
by  day,  and  he  watched  the  disaster  with  despair 
in  his  soul,  his  will  overthrown,  incapable  of 
guarding  against  himself.  The  evil  was  of  long 
standing.  Sainte-Beuve  says,  in  1837,  "  I  saw 
Musset  the  other  day,  very  amiable,  and  nice  in 
complexion  and  face,  and  so  broken  and  impaired 
in  stamina  underneath." 

He  suffered  cruelly  while  his  fate  was  being 
accomplished.  In  1839,  as  his  brother  tells  us, 
he  was  about  to  kill  himself.  The  year  following 
Tattet  showed  to  Sainte-Beuve  a  scrap  of  paper 
which  he  had  caught  up  that  very  morning  in 
the  country,  on  Musset's  table.  The  verses  on 
it  were  written  in  pencil: 

I've  lost  my  strength  and  life  of  late, 
And  many  friends  and  merry  cheer, 
And  all  that  pride's  no  longer  here 

Which  made  men  think  my  genius  great. 
154 


ALFRED  DE  MUSSET  155 

The  causes  of  this  anticipated  death  are  fright- 
fully sad.  We  should  bear  in  mind  the  frailty 
of  the  human  machine,  the  irrepressible  rioting 
of  his  nerves,  and  we  shall  get  glimpses  of  the 
physical  frailties  which  caused  him  to  lose  the 
mastery  and  control  over  himself.  One  evening 
in  1844,  after  his  marraine  had  talked  to  him  in 
a  very  serious  manner,  as  she  had  hopes  of  lead- 
ing him  to  regain  control  of  himself,  he  lifted 
the  veil  which  hid  his  misery  until  she  burst  into 
tears.  "  I  am  not  able  to  repeat  what  he  told 
me.  That  is  beyond  my  strength.  Only  you 
must  understand  that  he  defeated  me  at  every 
point."  On  the  morrow  Musset  sent  her  the  son- 
net printed  in  the  Biography:  "  Let  fools  calum- 
niate; I  hardly  care."  Let  us  pass  by,  turning 
our  heads  aside,  our  hearts  full  of  compassion. 
Let  us  feel  the  pity  of  it,  when  a  misery  can 
drive  genius  to  such  a  suicide. 

Musset  asked  no  indulgence  from  the  public. 
'  The  world  has  no  compassion  except  for  ills  of 
which  men  die."  In  his  family  he  gave  way  to 
deep  sadness,  which  kept  growing  with  each 
endeavor  to  dispel  his  trouble.  One  evening, 
on  returning  from  a  pleasure-party,  he  wrote: 
"  Among  those  who  haunt  taverns,  there  are 
some  who  are  merry  and  rosy,  others  pale  and 
taciturn.  Can  there  be  a  more  painful  spectacle 
than  that  of  a  suffering  libertine?  Some  I  have 
seen  whose  laugh  made  me  shudder.  He  who 


156  THE   LIFE    OF 

desires  to  subdue  his  soul  with  the  arms  of  the 
senses  can  intoxicate  himself  at  his  ease;  he  can 
put  on  an  apathetic  and  unmoved  exterior;  he 
can  lock  up  his  thought  in  an  unbending  will; 
his  thought  will  not  cease  to  low  in  the  brazen 
bull."  His  thought  did  its  duty,  and  continued 
to  "  low."  His  sick  and  diseased  will  failed  in 
its  duty,  and  came  not  to  aid  him.  This  moral 
death  struggle  lasted  more  than  fifteen  years. 

In  public,  or  in  his  letters,  he  wore  a  pleasant 
look  and  kept  up  his  spirits.  His  uncommon 
mobility  made  the  task  rather  easy.  He  would 
amuse  himself  like  a  child  with  the  veriest  trifles. 
The  minor  misfortunes  of  life,  which  he  never 
considered  it  in  good  taste  to  take  too  seriously, 
had  the  mighty  gift  even  of  reawakening  his  ani- 
mation. We  may  assert  that  his  repeated  tiffs 
with  the  national  guard,  when  he  would  not  do 
duty,  were  wholesome.  Generally  he  got  the 
worst  of  it,  and  had  to  spend  the  night  in  the 
guard-house.  When  he  found  himself  actually 
under  lock  and  key  in  Cell  14,  set  apart  for  art- 
ists and  writers,  he  found  it  so  preposterous  that 
he  laughed  in  his  own  face,  in  prose  and  verse. 
Every  one  has  read  My  Prisons.,  written  at  No. 
14.  The  poem  has  a  pendant,  which  is  not  so 
well  known.  In  a  letter  to  Augustine  Brohan, 
he  says :  "  I  am  in  irons,  groaning  amid  the  dun- 
geons. This  is  not  to  prevent  my  coming  to  see 
you  to-morrow.  But  I  write  you  this  from  the 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          157 

bottom  of  the  cellular  system.  At  the  present 
moment  I  am  in  that  famous  No.  14,  the  one 
ill  engraved  in  the  Diable  a  Paris.  The  cause 
is  patrol  duty,  as  I  have  not  slain  anybody." 

After  such  gleams  of  cheerfulness  he  sank 
back  and  became  as  gloomy  as  ever.  To  the 
too  well-founded  reasons  for  melancholy  which 
have  been  related  were  added  various  annoyances, 
and  among  them  his  scant  success.  He  was  al- 
ways unpretentious — a  little  less  assuming  as  he 
grew  older — and  compliments  horrified  him  so 
that  he  appeared  haughty  and  disdainful.  '  You 
speak  to  me,"  he  wrote  to  Madame  Jaubert, 
"  about  people  who  at  times  are  eager  to  tell 
me  of  the  pleasure  I  have  afforded  them.  On 
my  word  of  honor,  nine  out  of  ten  compliments 
are  intolerable  to  me.  I  do  not  say  that  I  con- 
sider them  false,  but  they  give  me  a  mind  to  cut 
and  run."  In  1838  he  says  to  Tattet :  "  You  too ! 
Tu  quoque.  Brute!  You  are  paying  me  compli- 
ments. As  they  come  from  you,  I  take  them 
with  a  hearty  good-will.  Do  not  call  me  illus- 
trious; you  might  render  me  sorry  that  I  am  not. 
When  you  want  to  pay  me  a  compliment,  call 
me  your  friend." 

But  one  may  be  unassuming  and  all  in  vain; 
there  is  an  indifference  which  grieves  and  dis- 
courages a  writer,  and  the  poet  of  the  Nights 
had  had  a  hard  experience  of  it.  At  all  times 
there  had  been  young  men  who  knew  Holla  by 


158  THE   LIFE    OF 

heart.  The  crowd  had  almost  forgotten  Musset, 
for  all  the  brilliancy  of  his  debut,  because  after 
writing  Holla  he  had  detached  himself  from  the 
group  of  innovators.  He  had  forsworn  the  ro- 
mantic form  at  the  moment  of  the  triumph  of 
romanticism.  The  press  paid  no  further  atten- 
tion to  him,  the  public  in  general  lost  interest 
in  him,  and  his  finest  works  were  greeted,  one 
after  the  other,  by  the  silence  of  indifference. 
In  1833  Heine  exclaimed  with  astonishment: 
"  Among  the  fashionable  he  is  as  unknown  as 
an  author  as  a  Chinese  poet  could  be."  Madame 
Jaubert  reports  this  remark,  and  adds  that  Heine 
told  the  truth.  The  salons  of  Paris,  her  own 
included,  knew  only  the  Ballad  and  the  Anda- 
lusian.  One  evening  at  her  house,  Geruzez  took 
it  into  his  head  to  repeat,  before  some  thirty 
persons,  the  duel  in  Don  Paez.  The  audience 
listened  in  surprise.  Not  one  of  them  had  read  it. 
Counting  for  so  little  in  the  intellectual  move- 
ment, and,  moreover,  being  somewhat,  a  little  too 
much,  apart  from  public  affairs,  Musset,  as  he 
grew  older,  had  the  emptiest  existence.  To  him, 
of  all  great  writers,  it  would  be  befitting  to  apply 
what  has  been  said  with  such  good  sense  respect- 
ing the  dangers  which  come  from  the  literary  in- 
fluence of  the  salon  and  of  women.  Musset  lived 
far  too  long  the  life  of  the  salon  and  in  the 
society  of  women.  By  dint  of  riming  bouquets 
a  Chloe  for  his  rosy  little  darlings,  and  of  court- 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          159 

ing  the  plaudits  of  their  tiny  palms,  he  lost  the 
habit  of  virile  thinking  and  effort  at  the  time 
when  it  was  a  question  of  life  and  death. 

His  days  were  woven  of  mere  nothings  when 
he  ceased  to  give  them  to  labor.  His  letters  bear 
witness  to  that.  The  events  of  those  long  years 
are  certain  short  journeys  and  many  ridiculous 
passions.  In  1845  he  passes  a  part  of  the  sum- 
mer in  the  Vosges.  On  returning  he  writes  to 
his  faithful  Tattet:  "  Nothing  lifts  the  heart  or 
beautifies  the  mind  like  these  long  trips  about  the 
kingdom.  Incredible  is  the  number  of  houses, 
peasants,  flocks  of  geese,  beer-glasses,  stable- 
boys,  aldermen,  warmed-up  dishes,  village  cures, 
literary  persons,  high  dignitaries,  hop-fields, 
vicious  horses,  and  broken-down  donkeys  pass- 
ing before  my  eyes.  .  .  ." 

"  I  came  back  with  a  young  beauty  of  forty- 
five  or  forty-six,  who  was  on  the  way  from  War- 
saw to  the  Batignolles  in  the  diligences  of  Notre- 
Dame-des-Victoires.  The  fact  is  history:  She 
would  eat  a  Polish  cake  of  the  color  of  Marolles 
cheese,  weep  from  time  to  time,  and  ask  what 
o'clock  it  was,  all  because  a  big  gentleman,  seven 
or  eight  feet  long,  had,  to  all  appearances,  had 
a  squabble  with  her;  this  gentleman  was  called 
mon  bien-aime  ;  at  all  events,  this  was  the  only 
name  I  heard  her  call  him."  The  bien-aime  had 
gone  off  in  a  sulk  to  the  back  seats,  leaving 
Musset  face  to  face  in  the  coupe  with  Dulcinea. 


160  THE    LIFE    OF 

"  Fancy  my  situation !  Happily,  her  Ariadne 
face  made  me  think  of  Bacchus.  So  at  Voic  I 
bought  a  bottle  of  excellent  wine  for  ten  sous, 
good  through  and  through,  along  with  a  chicken, 
and  in  this  way,  she  weeping,  I  tippling,  we 
journeyed  sadly.  O  my  friend,  how  many  ex- 
cruciating dramas,  sufferings,  palpitations  may 
reside  in  the  three  compartments  of  the  coach!  " 

Madame  Jaubert  was  the  titled  confidant  in 
heart  matters.  The  next  letter  refers  to  the  fall- 
ing out  with  Princess  Belgiojoso:  "Marraine! 
The  lad  is  discomfited!  Do  you  know  what  the 
poor  creature  did?  He  wrote,  heart  open.  .  .  . 
They  gave  him  a  rap  on  the  head.  The  answer 
they  made  him,  O  Marraine !  was  a  response  not 
fit  for  print.  .  .  .  And  know  you  what  the 
poor  ninny  began  by  doing  as  he  got  the  answer, 
immortal  or  at  least  worthy  to  be  immortal?  He 
— I — began  to  weep,  and  cried  like  a  calf  for  a 
full  half -hour. 

"  Yes,  Marraine,  hot,  scalding  tears  as  in  my 
best  days,  my  head  in  my  hands,  both  elbows  on 
my  bed,  heel  on  my  cravat,  knees  on  my  new 
coat,  and  lo !  I  sobbed  like  a  child  having  his  face 
washed,  and  more,  I  had  the  advantage  of  suf- 
fering like  a  hound  when  they  are  sewing  him 
up.  .  .  .  My  room  was  a  very  ocean  of  bitter- 
ness, as  the  good  people  say.  .  .  ." 

This  deep  despair  brought  out  Sur  wie  Morte 
— lines  of  excessive  cruelty.  Musset  seemed  to 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          161 

be  making  his  endeavor  to  win  a  reputation  for 
frivolity  in  a  country  where  that  finds  the  least 
forgiveness.  However,  the  hour  of  his  glory  was 
at  hand.  It  is  very  hard  to  trace  the  latent,  de- 
liberate working  which  goes  on  in  the  public 
mind  till  it  ends  in  an  explosion  of  renown,  above 
all  when  a  writer  is  concerned  whose  work  has 
been  long  in  print.  We  may  note  a  few  indica- 
tions, hazard  guesses;  there  still  remains  the  ele- 
ment of  mystery.  The  revulsion  in  Musset's 
favor  was  preceded  by  symptoms  which  assur- 
edly were  very  full  of  meaning.  But  yet  they 
are  far  from  explaining  everything. 

In  the  spring  of  1843  the  very  indifferent 
Lucrece  of  Ponsard  showed  how  tired  everybody 
was  of  romanticism.  Musset  was  fated  to  profit 
by  this  revolution  in  taste.  For  other  reasons, 
which  form  the  mystery  here,  his  poems  began 
to  find  a  way  to  every  heart;  many  persons  were 
discovering  him.  This  went  on  so  fast  that,  three 
years  after  the  success  of  Lucrece  and  the  failure 
of  the  Bur  graves f  we  meet  with  protests  against 
the  excess  of  favor  shown  him  by  the  young.  In 
the  earlier  months  of  1846  Sainte-Beuve  copies 
into  his  Journal  a  letter,  in  which  Brizeux  says: 
'*  What  might  well  astonish  you  is  the  exclusive 
infatuation  for  Musset.  I  have  small  liking  for 
that  art  hi  the  solemn  chateaux  of  Louis  XIV., 
but  the  entresol  of  Saint-Georges  Street  suits 
me  no  better."  Sainte-Beuve  accompanies  these 


162  THE   LIFE    OF 

lines  with  a  note  to  make  them  worse.  This  up- 
ward flight  which  Musset  had  suddenly  taken 
appears  to  him  ridiculous,  as  well  as  a  thing  to 
be  regretted,  and  he  talks  of  it  in  a  bitter  way. 
The  burst  of  popularity  occasioned  by  the  suc- 
cess of  the  Caprice  finished  the  work  of  putting 
him  out  of  humor.  We  already  have  seen  his 
prosecuting  tone  as  to  II  ne  faut  jurer,  and 
toward  the  end  of  1849  we  find  him  coming  back 
to  the  popularity  of  the  Caprice,  and  writing: 
"  People  overdo  everything.  In  Musset 's  suc- 
cess there  is  the  genuine  and  there  is  mere  in- 
fatuation. It  is  not  merely  the  lofty  and  the 
delicate  element  which  people  like.  Our  dissi- 
pated young  men  adore  in  Musset  an  expression 
of  their  own  vices,  and  in  his  poetry  they  find 
nothing  finer  than  certain  racy  breakings  forth, 
in  which  he  strikes  out  like  a  madman.  They 
take  the  want  of  human  refinement  for  a  token 
of  force."  Useless  display  of  sullen  vexation. 
It  lay  no  longer  in  any  one's  power  to  prevent 
Musset  from  moving  up  to  the  first  rank  by  the 
side  of  Lamartine  and  Victor  Hugo.  After  a 
riot  of  tinsel  and  plumes,  which  had  lasted  twenty 
years,  there  had  come  a  return  to  truth  and  natu- 
ralness. Having  acquired  a  taste  for  Musset 
through  seeing  his  dramatic  works  played,  those 
who  had  applauded  him  the  night  before  at  the 
Francais  opened  his  later  poems,  and  the  sim- 
plicity of  his  language  enraptured  them.  They 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          163 

came  upon  verses  of  a  frank  and  high-flavored 
realism  which  suited  the  unwonted  needs  of  their 
minds,  and  not  less  startled  were  they  by  the  sin- 
cerity of  his  feeling.  To  the  Muse's  question 
in  the  Night  of  August: 

Thy  heart  is  poet  or  is  't  thou  ? 

they  also  would  have  answered,  without  hesitat- 
ing, "  It  is  thy  heart,"  and  this  drew  them  toward 
the  author  as  toward  a  friend  to  whom  we  can 
unbosom  ourselves.  All  surrendered  to  Musset. 
What  he  became  in  a  short  time  for  the  younger 
generation  he  continued  to  be  down  to  the  war, 
and  no  one  has  shown  this  better  than  Taine. 
The  page  written  in  1864  is  the  first  and  most 
discerning  page  touching  the  almost  irresistible 
seductive  charm  excited  for  twenty  years  by 
Alfred  de  Musset: 

"  He  is  dead,  and  yet  we  seem  every  day  to 
hear  him  speak.  The  chat  and  pleasantry  of  art- 
ists in  a  studio,  a  pretty  young  girl  at  the  theater 
bending  over  the  edge  of  the  box,  a  street  scoured 
by  the  rain  and  the  glitter  of  the  blackened  pave- 
ments, a  fresh,  cool  morning,  all  smiles,  in  the 
Fontainebleau  woods — there  is  naught  that  does 
not  bring  him  back  before  us,  as  if  living  a  sec- 
ond life.  Was  there  ever  a  more  thrilling,  truer 
accent?  He,  at  the  least,  was  one  who  never  told 
any  lies.  He  said  only  what  he  felt,  and  as  he 
felt  it  so  he  said  it.  He  thought  aloud.  He 


164  THE   LIFE   OF, 

made  everybody's  confession.  We  did  not  ad- 
mire, we  loved  him;  he  was  a  poet — nay  more,  he 
was  a  man.  In  him  each  man  detected  his  own 
sentiments,  no  matter  how  fleeting  or  deeply  felt. 
He  threw  off  constraint  and  yielded  to  inspira- 
tion, and  he  possessed  the  last  of  the  virtues 
which  remain  among  us — generosity  and  sincer- 
ity. He  had  the  most  precious  of  the  gifts  which 
can  cast  a  spell  over  a  civilization  grown  old — 
namely,  youth.  How  he  spoke  of  that  hot  youth, 
the  tree  that  has  a  tough  bark,  that  with  its 
shadow  covers  all  things — highways  and  hori- 
zons !  With  what  impetuosity  did  he  hurl  about 
and  clash  together  love  and  jealousy,  the  thirst 
for  pleasure  and  all  unbridled  passions  which 
mount  with  the  tides  of  virgin  blood  from  the 
deeps  of  a  youthful  heart!  Has  any  man  felt 
them  more?  He  was  too  full  of  them,  he  sur- 
rendered to  them,  he  was  intoxicated  with  them. 
Too  much  did  he  ask  of  things.  He  longed  to 
taste  all  of  life  at  one  draft,  bitter  and  eager. 
He  did  not  pluck  it  as  a  flower  and  enjoy  its 
fragrance;  he  tore  it  away  like  clustered  fruit, 
crushed  and  wrenched  and  bruised  it,  and  stood 
there,  with  hands  smeared,  as  much  athirst  as 
before.  Then  burst  forth  the  sobs  which  echoed 
in  all  hearts.  What!  So  young  and  already  so 
weary!  The  Muse  and  her  peaceful  beauty,  na- 
ture and  her  immortal  freshness,  love  and  her 
beatific  smile,  all  the  swarm  of  heavenly  visions 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          165 

hardly  pass  before  his  eyes  when  all  the  specters 
of  debauch  and  death  flock  in,  amid  curses  and 
sarcasms."  "  Still,  such  as  you  behold  him,  we 
continue  to  love  him;  we  can  listen  to  none  other, 
and  by  his  side  all  others  seem  chill  and  false." 
He  was  "  never  false;  he  felt  the  pangs  of  which 
he  sang;  he  was  more  than  a  poet — he  was  a 
man."  Even  so  must  all  speak,  and  it  is  for 
that  reason  that  we  have  so  much  loved  Musset, 
and  that  no  other  poet  can  supplant  him  in  our 
hearts. 

He  was  still  fit  to  enjoy  his  popularity,  less, 
however,  than  if  the  hour  had  struck  ten  years 
sooner.  From  1840  onward,  diseases  swept  down 
upon  him:  pneumonia,  pleurisy,  heart-complaint 
(which  was  to  carry  him  off),  and  then  nerve 
storms,  followed  by  attacks  of  fever  and  deliri- 
um. Each  assault  left  him  more  nervous  and 
overwrought,  too  sensitive,  restless,  excessive  in 
all  things,  whether  in  isolation  with  his  aches  and 
his  despondency,  or  flinging  himself,  with  new 
passion,  into  pernicious  enjoyments.  Charming, 
despite  it  all,  in  his  better  hours,  and  leaving  an 
ineffaceable  impression  upon  all  who,  broken 
loose  from  college,  came  to  his  door  to  have  sight 
of  the  poet  of  youth:  "  It  was  no  longer  that 
image  of  an  adolescent  almost,  a  kind  of  Muse's 
cherub,  preserved  for  us  by  David  d' Angers  in 
his  wonderful  medallion;  but  how  different  was 
that  handsome,  grave,  resolute,  almost  energetic 


166  THE    LIFE    OF 

face  from  Landelle's  portrait,  in  which  the  dull, 
lusterless  eye  is  void  of  light,  and  life  seems  ex- 
hausted! A  head  of  hair  still  abundant,  but  re- 
ceiving from  many  a  silver  thread  the  changing 
tint  which  is  not  without  its  harmony,  crowned 
a  countenance  which,  though  cold  and  gloomy 
when  in  repose,  both  grace  and  wit  would  soon 
revive,  and  then  leave  pallid  or  embrowned,  and 
betraying  the  disease  which  already  afflicted 
him."  Throughout  the  visit  poetry  was  the 
topic.  "  If  my  pen,"  said  Musset,  "  is  not  for- 
ever broken  in  my  hand,  Suzette  and  Suzon  will 
not  be  the  subject  of  my  song."  His  young  in- 
terlocutors having  alluded  to  the  Hope  in  God, 
and  to  other  pages  of  similar  inspiration,  he 
went  on:  "  Yes,  I  have  drawn  from  that  spring 
of  poetry,  but  my  wish  now  is  to  draw  more 
freely  from  it." 

It  is  in  this  way  that  one  loves  to  represent 
Musset  toward  the  end :  a  grave  and  earnest  man 
who,  at  least  in  thought,  breaks  away  from  the 
mire  in  which  he  was  too  often  accustomed  to 
wallow.  The  influence  of  a  humble  religieuse 
had  done  much  to  promote  serious  thinking. 
During  an  attack  of  pneumonia,  in  1840,  he  had 
been  nursed  by  Sister  Marceline,  so  often  men- 
tioned in  his  letters.  He  writes  to  his  brother 
in  June,  1840:  "  My  lines  to  Sister  Marceline  I 
shall  finish  out  one  of  these  days — next  year, 
within  ten  years,  whenever  it  pleases  and  if  it 
pleases  me — but  I  shall  not  publish  them,  and 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          167 

I  will  not  so  much  as  write  them.  It  is  too  much 
to  have  repeated  them.  I  have  said  so  many 
things  to  idle  meddlers,  and  I  shall  say  so  many 
more,  that  I  have  good  right,  once  in  my  life, 
to  compose  a  few  strophes  for  private  use.  My 
admiration  and  my  gratitude  for  this  saintly 
woman  shall  never  be  soiled  with  ink  from  the 
printer's  tampon.  This  is  settled,  so  do  not  speak 
of  it  again.  Madame  de  Castries  approves,  and 
says  that  it  is  good  to  have  a  secret  drawer  in 
the  soul,  provided  we  put  into  it  only  wholesome 
things." 

At  the  time  of  this  second  sickness  he  had  sent 
for  Sister  Marceline.  The  convent,  with  great 
prudence,  sent  him  some  one  else.  He  writes 
to  his  Marraine :  "  Instead  of  her,  they  have  let 
fly  at  me  a  big  mama — fat,  florid — who  eats  for 
four  and  is  not  prone  to  melancholy.  She  nursed 
me  very  well,  and  she  bored  me  dreadfully.  Ah! 
how  rare  they  are — Sister  Marcelines !  How  few 
beings  there  are  in  this  world  who  can  do  more, 
when  you  are  sick  and  suffering,  than  give  you 
a  cup  of  tea!  How  few  there  are  who  know 
how  to  cure  and  soothe  you  at  the  same  time! 
Whenever  Marceline  would  come  to  the  bedside, 
little  cup  in  hand,  and  say,  with  her  little  choris- 
ter voice,  *  What  a  dreadful  knot  you  are  tying 
there!'  (she  meant  that  I  was  knitting  my 
brows),  the  poor  dear  soul  would  have  cheered 
up  Leopardi  himself! " 

At  long  intervals  Sister  Marceline  would  come 


168  THE   LIFE    OF 

to  inquire  after  his  health,  chat  a  few  moments, 
and  disappear.  Musset  deemed  these  visits  to  be 
the  favors  of  a  mysterious  and  consoling  force. 
Once  only  did  he  have  her  to  nurse  him  again. 
On  the  14th  of  May  he  writes  to  Tattet:  "  I  have 
just  had  pneumonia.  When  I  say  that,  it  is 
pleurisy  I  mean,  but  the  name  does  not  alter 
the  case.  You  understand,  I  had  religieuses  to 
attend  to  me.  My  good  Sister  Marceline  came 
back,  then  a  second  with  her — kind,  gentle,  with 
the  charm  they  all  possess,  and,  besides,  a  woman 
of  intelligence." 

Sister  Marceline  had  treated  the  soul  as  well 
as  the  body,  and,  with  a  pious  touch  and  the  bold- 
ness of  pure  hearts,  dressed  the  moral  wounds 
open  to  her  eyes.  The  language  which  she  used 
with  Musset  was  new  to  him.  It  was  austere 
and  it  was  consoling,  but  how  much  she  won  for 
God  no  man  has  ever  known ;  and  yet  it  is  certain 
that  peace  came  into  the  sick-chamber  with  Sister 
Marceline,  and,  alas!  departed  with  her.  Mus- 
set's  last  years  were  most  painful  in  spite  of  the 
keenly  appreciated  delights  of  growing  fame. 
The  heart-disease  caused  him  tiresome  agitation. 
He  was  always  restless  and  in  torture,  and  he 
was  sleepless.  His  last  verses,  written  in  1857, 
depict  this  state  of  anguish,  with  no  rest  or  any- 
thing else  to  alleviate  it.  "I  feel  my  heart  stop- 
ping suddenly,  my  strength  to  struggle  worn  and 
wasted  away."  It  was  truly  a  deliverance  for 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          169 

him — his  death.  On  the  evening  of  May  1, 1857, 
he  was  worse,  and  confined  to  the  bed.  Sister 
Marceline  was  not  at  hand,  but  her  patient  face 
flitted  before  the  eyes  of  the  dying  man,  for  the 
last  time  allaying  his  pain.  Toward  one  o'clock 
in  the  morning  Musset  murmured,  "  Sleep !  At 
last  I  am  to  sleep ! "  and  he  closed  his  eyes,  never 
to  open  them  again.  Death  had  taken  him 
gently  in  his  sleep.  They  buried  with  him  a 
plain  little  tricot  knitted  by  Marceline,  and  a 
pen,  embroidered  with  silk,  which  the  sister  had 
made  for  him  seventeen  years  before.  On  the 
pen  was  this:  "Bear  your  promises  in  mind." 

The  burial  took  place  in  gloomy,  damp  weath- 
er. "  We  were  twenty-seven  in  all,"  says  Arsene 
Houssaye.  Then  where  were  the  students?  How 
could  they  allow  the  bier  to  hold  their  darling 
poet,  and  move  almost  alone  along  the  path  to 
the  grave? 

His  star  attained  its  zenith  during  the  second 
empire.  At  that  time  he  enjoyed  a  dazzling  re- 
nown. To  seat  him  beside  Lamartine  and  Victor 
Hugo  was  no  longer  contemplated,  but  his  faith- 
ful admirers  were  for  putting  him  a  little  in 
front,  at  the  head  of  the  three.  While  the  real- 
istic current  carried  away  certain  people  toward 
Balzac,  whose  great  success  dates  from  the  same 
epoch,  other  men,  the  dreamers  and  the  more 
sensitive,  stopped  at  the  beginning  of  the  way, 
close  by  the  poet  who  had  never  lied,  although 


170  THE    LIFE    OF 

he  refrained  from  uttering  everything:  Baude- 
laire would  put  them  to  shame  for  loitering  over 
a  poetry  of  "  silken  ladders,"  but  he  wasted  his 
time  and  trouble.  He  wrote  to  Armand  Fraisse, 
in  terms  which  are  too  coarse  to  be  given  in  full: 
"  You  feel  poetry  like  a  mere  dilettantist.  That 
is  the  true  way  to  feel  it.  From  that  word  which 
I  underscore  you  can  guess  that  I  experienced  a 
certain  surprise  at  observing  your  admiration  for 
Musset.  Except  at  the  age  of  first  communion, 
I  could  never  endure  that  dandy-in-ehief ,  with 
his  impudence  worthy  of  a  spoiled  child,  calling 
on  heaven  and  hell  in  mere  table  d'hote  adven- 
tures, his  muddy  torrent  of  blunders  in  grammar 
and  meter."  Baudelaire's  voice  cried  in  the  wil- 
derness, as  is  shown  by  Sainte-Beuve's  note  at 
the  foot  of  the  page:  "  Nothing  is  a  better  test 
of  the  literary  generations  which  succeeded  us 
than  the  enthusiastic  admiration,  the  almost  fran- 
tic infatuation,  which  seized  all  the  younger  men 
— the  gluttons  for  Balzac,  and  the  dainty  for 
Musset." 

His  glory  had  flashed  beyond  the  limits  of 
France,  and  a  distinguished  British  writer — 
Francis  Palgrave — devoted  an  essay  to  him, 
which  becomes  doubly  interesting  to  us  through 
the  unexpected  quality  of  certain  ideas  and  cer- 
tain comparisons.  After  noting  the  fact  that 
Musset  had  overleaped  the  barriers  of  Paris,  Pal- 
grave  passes  to  a  survey  of  his  works.  He  finds 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          171 

hardly  anything  but  what  is  blameworthy  in  the 
Confession,  which  in  his  eyes  is  violent,  extrava- 
gant, and  very  false,  for  all  its  pretensions  to 
realism.  As  an  offset  to  this,  he  puts  the  Stories 
by  the  side  of  Weriher  and  the  Vicar  of  Wake- 
field. 

The  verse  makes  him  think,  not  of  Byron,  as 
we  might  have  expected,  but  of  Shelley,  of  Ten- 
nyson, and  "  perhaps  "  of  the  poets  of  the  age 
of  Elizabeth.  The  lines  are  "  musical,  and  not 
declamatory."  Englishmen,  according  to  Pal- 
grave,  prefer  Musset  to  Lamartine,  because  he 
is  less  absorbed  in  his  ego,  and  to  Victor  Hugo, 
because  he  does  not  weary  them  with  antitheses. 
Certain  pieces  of  his  possess  a  peculiar  and  in- 
definable grace,  a  beauty  as  of  the  ancient  world, 
a  something  recalling  ^Bolian  and  Ionian  perfec- 
tion. The  Tales  of  Spain  and  of  Italy  are  de- 
cidedly fantastic,  he  thinks,  but  full  of  vigor. 
The  verdict  as  to  the  man  is  of  exquisite  delicacy. 
He  would  have  made  us  bear  in  mind,  had  we 
been  tempted  to  forget  it,  that  we  ought  to  speak 
reverently  of  great  poets:  When  men  molded  of 
that  clay  fall,  they  should  be  judged  with  a  ten- 
der respect.  We  who  are  of  less  fine  and  sensi- 
tive constitution,  unable  to  enter  into  the  mys- 
terious sufferings  of  genius,  into  its  wrestlings 
with  its  angels,  we  ought  not  to  forget  that  in 
a  certain  sense,  and  in  reality,  those  men  suffer 
for  us;  that  in  themselves  they  sum  up  our  un- 


172  THE   LIFE   OF 

conscious  aspirations;  that  they  put  before  our 
sight  the  spectacle  of  conflicts  severer  than  ours, 
and  that  they  are  truly  the  confessors  of  human- 
ity. We  admit  readily  that  many  of  Musset's 
first  poems,  as  well  as  the  Confession,  would  not 
be  in  their  place  in  an  English  parlor;  that  they 
are  works  to  be  kept  for  those  alone  who  have 
courage  enough,  with  love  of  truth  and  purity 
of  soul,  to  make  such  pictures  of  the  abysses  of 
human  nature  of  worth  in  framing  their  course  of 
life.  But,  granting  all  that,  we  do  not  think  that 
men  can  read  Musset  without  discerning  in  his 
genius  something  of  which  the  history  of  French 
poetry  has  never  hitherto  furnished  an  example. 
German  opinion  has  not  been  less  favorable  to 
him.  An  entire  volume  has  been  devoted  to  him 
by  Paul  Lindau,  who  concludes  that  Musset,  if 
not  the  greatest  poet  of  his  time,  is  its  most  poetic 
temperament.  No  one  equals  him  in  depth  of 
poetic  intuition,  nor  is  any  one  as  sincere  and 
as  true.  It  may  be  that  his  feelings  are  un- 
healthy, but  he  has  experienced  them,  and  has 
given  an  expression  to  them  which  is  at  all  times 
perfectly  candid,  lie  detests  the  comedy  of  sen- 
timent, and  he  hates  phrases.  He  lives  in  unceas- 
ing fear  of  self-delusion,  preferring  self-con- 
tempt to  self-deception.  This  absolute  integrity 
and  candor  is  what  captivates  us  and  wins  us 
again,  the  thing  which  endears  him  to  us.  Grill- 
parzer  said  that  the  spring  of  all  poetry  was  in 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          173 

the  truth  of  the  sensation ;  Musset's  poetry  is,  all 
of  it,  explained  by  this  truth.  When  he  is  wrong, 
he  is  still  in  real  earnest.  Lindau  also  recalls  the 
fact  that  Heine  called  Musset  the  foremost  lyric 
of  France. 

To  this  glory  nothing  has  been  wanting,  not 
even  the  dangerous  honor  of  originating  a  school 
and  of  being  imitated  as  a  poet  may  be  imitated 
— in  his  method,  in  his  choice  of  subjects,  his 
vocabulary,  his  whims,  his  minor  defects  of  every 
sort.  Innumerable  were  the  songs,  the  flippant 
madrigals,  the  little  bits  of  unsavory,  free-and- 
easy  verse,  the  licentious  pieces  more  like  the 
younger  Crebillon  than  Musset,  the  Ninons  and 
Ninettes  of  Breda  Street,  the  contraband  mar- 
quises and  Andalusians  out  of  the  Batignollies — 
of  all  these  Musset  would  now  be  the  grandsire, 
responsible  for  them  before  posterity,  had  any- 
thing of  them  survived.  It  is  a  blessing  that  all 
that  is  forgotten,  for  the  family  was  not  desira- 
ble. Musset  of  the  best  days,  of  the  great  days, 
Musset  of  the  Nuits  could  bring  inspiration;  he 
could  kindle  the  spark  slumbering  in  others' 
hearts,  but  he  could  have  no  disciples,  for  he 
had  no  processes  and  no  manner — he,  the  most 
personal  of  poets.  You  cannot  obtain  from  any 
man  his  heart  and  nerves,  or  his  poetic  vision  or 
his  lyrical  emotion.  In  a  word,  you  cannot  ob- 
tain his  genius  from  him,  and  there  was  almost 
nothing  to  borrow  from  Musset  save  his  genius. 


174  THE   LIFE    OF 

The  same  causes  which  raised  him  so  high  in 
the  favor  of  the  many  are  now  turning  away 
from  him  the  approval  of  the  new  school,  that 
which  grows  great  upon  the  ruins  of  naturalism. 
Our  young  men  no  longer  like  the  natural,  either 
in  idiom,  thought,  feeling,  or  even  in  things.  A 
taste  for  the  singular  has  got  hold  of  them  again, 
and  one  for  the  distortion  of  the  real.  Whether 
they  style  themselves  decadents  or  symbolists,  it 
is  mere  romanticism,  disguised  and  debaptized, 
springing  up  anew  in  their  productions,  but  yet 
easy  to  detect  beneath  the  mask,  and  in  spite  of 
altered  labels.  It  has  grown  to  be  far  more 
mystic.  It  has  lost  the  arrogance  which  recalled 
Corneille  and  the  heroines  of  the  Fronde,  and 
it  has  borrowed  from  the  moral  or  mental  some- 
thing scant  and  flabby,  but  hard  to  delineate.  It 
is  helped  along  by  a  complicated  and  learned  art, 
tested  by  which  the  art  of  the  Cenacle  is  merely 
child's  play,  but  which  seems  rather  Byzantine 
when  compared  with  the  bold  and  potent  devel- 
opment of  the  romantic  phrase.  This  is  the 
same,  with  thinner  blood,  weaker  temperament — 
yes,  it  is  the  same  old  romanticism.  What  in- 
terest could  the  poet  of  the  Souvenir  awake,  with 
his  simple  sorrows  within  all  men's  scope  and 
with  his  classic  French,  in  those  merely  curious 
as  to  rare  sensations — the  inventors  of  decadent 
writ?  Accordingly,  Musset  has  been  one  dis- 
dained by  them.  The  violence  also  of  his  feel- 


ALFRED   DE   MUSSET          175 

ings  has  been  an  injury  to  him  with  the  later 
generations.  It  is  with  wonderment  that  they 
contemplate  the  ravings  of  passion  and  storms 
of  sensibility  in  the  folk  of  1830.  They  are  too 
practical  or  too  intellectual  to  devour  their  own 
hearts ;  the  woes  which  Musset  cursed  and  blessed 
by  turns  with  equal  vehemence  inspire  them  with 
nothing  more  than  the  ironical  pity  usually  be- 
stowed upon  ridiculous  misfortunes.  What  at- 
traction can  a  poetry  possess  which  is  all  senti- 
ment and  passion  in  the  eyes  of  youth  who  call 
sentiment  mere  weakness,  love  an  infirmity? 
None,  assuredly.  And  they  have  forsaken  Mus- 
set, after  pronouncing  him  to  be  all  out  of  fash- 
ion, as  much  in  substance  as  in  form.  He  will 
bide  his  time.  His  great  fault  lies  in  being  still 
too  near  to  us.  The  ideas  and  literary  forms  of 
yesterday  always  shock  because  they  form  an 
awkward  restraint,  and  because  we  make  haste 
to  be  free  of  them.  It  is  only  when  they  have, 
for  good  and  all,  yielded  the  ground,  and  can 
no  longer  offer  hindrance  to  any  one,  that  we 
judge  of  them  with  impartiality.  So,  for  exam- 
ple, Lamartine,  after  an  almost  total  eclipse,  is 
now  coming  forth  again  from  clouds  which  once 
enshrouded  him.  So  Vigny  is  having  a  second 
aurora,  more  brilliant  than  the  first.  For  Musset 
the  time  has  not  yet  come.  Before  men  return 
to  him  they  must  have  quite  left  him,  and  Musset 
continues  to  reign,  like  a  tyrant,  without  sharing 


the  throne  with  another,  over  a  great  many  gray 
and  grizzled  heads,  who  really  cannot  listen  to 
another. 

A  few  years  more  and  the  generations  who 
submitted  to  him  will  have  vanished.  Then,  for 
him,  it  will  not  be  an  hour  of  oblivion,  but  rather 
an  hour  of  justice,  serene  and  unclouded.  Pos- 
terity is  to  make  its  own  choice  among  his  works, 
and  when  it  shall  hold  in  the  hollow  of  its  hand 
the  bunch  of  leaves  in  which  the  soul  of  an  en- 
tire epoch  shudders  and  weeps  with  Musset,  it 
will  exclaim,  understanding  his  sovereign  em- 
pire and  repeating  the  words  of  Taine:  "He 
was  more  than  a  poet,  he  was  a  man." 


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